Artificial intelligence could be about to improve the way nurses do their jobs. Recent exciting developments include bottles which automatically issue reminders to drink, diapers that sound an alert when wet and sensor-equipped stoma pouches. AI will change the focus of nursing care, improving nursing documentation, automating data collection and performing some of the tasks that are currently done by nurses. Professional nursing care will change from being reactive to being predictive, preventive nursing care.
The same types of voice-based technologies that we’ve previously discussed could also help with nursing activities. In healthcare settings, where sterile operating fields and infection control are priorities, hands-free, immediate access to information has big advantages in terms of safety and efficiency. At Boston Children’s ICU, AI-voice assistants allow nurses to ask for key administrative information, such as, “Who is the charge nurse on 7 South? How many beds are available on 8 East?” Clinicians are finding voice most useful for getting information that would otherwise involve picking up the phone, searching through documents or walking down the hall.
Voice can quickly access guidelines and protocols and save critical minutes in environments where wasted seconds can have a dramatic impact on outcomes. In the future, these AI-based solutions will become learning systems that anticipate information needs and provide just-in-time guidance. AI can save 20% of RN time through avoiding unnecessary visits. As virtual nursing assistants become accustomed to patient diagnoses and conditions, their abilities will grow beyond effective triage into expertise and recommendations around patient treatment.
CareIT Pro provides nursing software that uses AI and supports automation in nursing by reducing the need for information to be entered and linking to content so that further workflows and tasks can be automatically initiated at the right time. The software automatically recognizes patterns, evaluates the planned nursing goals and recommends necessary adaptations. Combining it with sensors, wearables and smart devices can further increase automation. Intelligent tools automatically deliver data on the patient to the nursing software and thus allow for automated documentation. Alarms, nursing tasks and digital processes can be generated and started independently. Nursing staff can receive digital to-do lists and see the current status and quality of nursing processes at all times so that they can react to them at an early stage.
Other such systems include an intelligent drinking cup that can automatically fill based on patient-specific drinking protocols and remind the patient to drink regularly, as well as a stoma pouch sensor that generates an automatic care task for changing the bag when it’s almost full. There’s also an intelligent nursing mattress that can detect not only the patient’s movement, breathing, position, pressure and sleep, but also incontinence.
Gauss Surgical is a Menlo Park-based startup that provides computer vision systems to monitor blood loss in operating and labor rooms to detect potential hemorrhages. This is an area where surgeons, nurses and technicians often need to collaborate to ensure that correct estimates are made and that the patient is adequately supported. Gauss Surgical’s AI solution allows clinical workflows in operating rooms to be improved and for some of the burden to be removed from the busy staff.
