[4-F-3-02] Security and data utilization required for remote ICU
Tele-ICU, Digital Transformation, Patient severity assessment
Tele-ICU is an advanced remote healthcare model where a diverse team of medical professionals collaborates to provide critical care support to patients across various facilities. It relies on four key components: (1) a patient image-capturing camera, (2) remote Electronic Health Records (EHRs) access, (3) a patient severity assessment system, and (4) a web conferencing platform. Inter-facility data integration is crucial for elements ② and ③ to function effectively. Yokohama City University's Tele-ICU benefits from shared EHRs provided by the same company, simplifying data integration. Currently, EHR data from these facilities centralizes in a data center, but important data like consciousness levels, medication details, and nursing observations for severity scoring remain unlinked. This necessitates manual data entry, complicated by differing EHR formats and input methods, highlighting the need for standardization. Newly added facilities in the current fiscal year use EHRs from different providers, posing data integration challenges. Future efforts should streamline this process given format diversity and reliance on manual input. Cybersecurity considerations will increase implementation costs. While Tele-ICU shows promise, structured data utilization and medical digital transformation (DX) evaluations are crucial to enhance acute care settings in the future.