Smart Leads. Smart Alarms. Smarter Workflow.

Alarms are a challenge in today's hospitals. Caregivers endure an enormous number of alarms, beeps and chimes which can be disruptive -leading to alarm fatigue, patient dissatisfaction and stress for family members. GE Healthcare is committed to working with clinicians to deliver timely critical patient information while supporting efforts to enhance and improve workflow.

ECRI Institute has identified alarm hazards as the number one issue in its Top 10 Technology Hazards for 2015. Strategies for reducing alarm hazards often focus on alarm fatigue, but this is not the only factor that should be considered when working towards improving clinical alarm managements. Alarm-related adverse events are often traced to inappropriate alarm configurations and practices. Inappropriate alarm configuration practices can lead to caregivers not being notified of a valid alarm condition, or caregivers being exposed to an excessive number of alarms.¹

GE Healthcare's advanced monitoring solutions include technologies to address the alarm management challenges and offer the potential to reduce alarm fatigue, provide insights into appropriate alarm configuration practices, enhance workflow and deliver a peaceful and healing environment for patients and staff. Our solutions have thoughtfully engineered to include the ability to adjust parameter settings to match the individual needs of the patients and have integrated to technology to ensure uninterrupted monitoring including:

Smart Lead Fail - providing uninterrupted arrhythmia monitoring in the event of a disconnected lead.
Telemetry Smart Alarms - helping to ensure uninterrupted monitoring.
User-Configurable Alarm Priority Setting² - allowing caregivers to tailor parameter and arrhythmia alarm priorities based on patient's intrinsic rhythm and/or parameter value.
Absolute Limits - prevents clinicians from adjusting parameter limits above and below what is considered a reasonable and safe range.
Locking Alarms - prevent clinicians from turning a parameter limit alarm off.

1. Smart Lead Fail

Smart Lead Fail provides uninterrupted arrhythmia monitoring in the event of a disconnected lead. Patients remain monitored until a nurse can restore the lead connection.

Once the lead is reconnected, monitoring continues without the relearning process. In less sophisticated monitoring systems, the patient is unmonitored while the system relearns the heart rhythm. Those delays can be hazardous to patients with life-threatening arrhythmias.

The picture below highlights the benefits of Smart Lead Fail. Having lost both the RA and V leads, monitoring continues without initiating a lengthy learning process. Arrhythmia processing is maintained until the clinician can reattach both leads.

2. Telemetry Smart Alarms

When telemetry packs are removed for bathing or tests that require patients to leave the floor, pausing and or reactivating alarms is often forgotten.

With Telemetry Smart Alarms, alarms will automatically reactivate when the patient is within range of the antenna system for 15 seconds or longer, and continuous ECG data is detected. If the patients remains out of antenna range, the alarm pause state will continue until the patient re-enters antenna range for the 15-second threshold.

3. User-Configurable Alarm Priority Setting²

User-configurable alarm priorities allow clinicians to tailor parameter and arrhythmia alarm priorities based on your patient's intrinsic rhythm and/or parameter value.

Case Report: A 69-year-old patient is admitted for elective surgery. The patient has a five-year history of controlled atrial fibrillation. While clinicians will continue to monitor the patient's rate, they can adjust the arrhythmia alarm priority from medium or low to informational. An informational alarm priority provides a visual alert without an audible alarm.

4. Absolute Limits

Absolute guard limits prevent clinicians from adjusting parameter limits above and below what is considered a reasonable and safe range. Absolute limits are configured by the system administrator and are password protected.

5. Locking Alarms

Locking alarms prevent clinicians from turning a parameter limit alarm off. An icon is placed next to the alarm setting indicating the alarm is locked. Locking alarms are configured by the system administrator and are password protected.

1. https://www.ecri.org/Resources/Whitepapers_and_reports/Top_Ten_Technology_Hazards_2015.pdf
2. Alarm changes are based on unit/facility alarm guidelines.