Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems for monitoring patients in a medical facility, and more particularly to a wireless system that automatically tracks activity of the patient.
2. Description of the Related Art
Patients in a hospital, an outpatient surgical center, an extended care facility, a nursing home, and other types of medical facilities are monitored by nursing personnel. In addition to recording a patient's vital signs, the ambulatory activity of the patient also is monitored. For example the number of times that a patient goes to the bathroom is observed as an indication of that bodily function. Orthopedic and other types of patients are prescribed to walk a certain amount at various times of the day as part of their rehabilitation and such activity also is monitored.
Observing activity of a patient consumes a considerable amount of personnel time. Some of the activity of a particular patient may be missed while the assigned nurse is attending to other patients.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system that automatically detects activity of a patient and enters information about the activity in the records for that person.
A method for monitoring activity of a patient in a medical facility comprises issuing an identification device to the patient wherein the identification device emits a first wireless signal that identifies the patient. At least one data collector is placed at a location in the medical facility at which activity of the patient is desired to be monitored. Preferably data collectors are placed throughout areas of the medical facility where patients may travel. Each data collector receives the first wireless signal, and a separate patient event record is produced for each time that the first wireless signal is received. The patient event record may contain an identification of the patient and the time that the first wireless signal was received. When a plurality of data collectors are used, each patient event record indicates the particular data collector that received the first wireless signal on that occasion.
The patient event records generated in this manner are utilized to provide information about the motion activity of the associated patient. For example, the patient event record may indicate every time that the patient visits a bathroom, thereby providing information about those bodily functions. In another situation, the patient event record indicate how often the patient walks around the medical facility as part of an exercise or physical therapy regimen. Using patient event records from several data collectors, information can be derived designating the distance and rate that the patient walks.
The patient identification device optionally may be connected to apparatus carried by the patient which measure vital signs, such as temperature and heart rate, for example. This information is subsequently transmitted from the patient identification device to a centralized system for recordkeeping and diagnostic purposes.
This method enables the activity of medical patients to be automatically monitored for assessment of their medical conditions and recoveries without requiring observation of the activity by medical personnel.
When a patient enters the medical facility, an admissions office worker inputs information into the patient records computer 12 via one of the personal computers 18. This process creates a record, for this visit of the patient, that contains standard information, such as the patient's name, address, biographical information, billing information, physicians' names and the like. As is conventional practice in most medical facilities, the personal computer prints a label 15 for a wristband that is worn by the patient to provide identification of this patient to healthcare workers.
However, unlike prior practice, the label 15 now is attached to a wristband 22 that contains an electronic identification device 24, which emits a radio frequency signal 23 carrying a unique identifier for this patient 20, as represented in
The identification device 24 may be programmed by the manufacturer with the patient identifier that may be the same as or different than the usual identification number assigned to patients upon admission. That identification number also is imprinted in human readable form on the wristband, so that it can be entered into the personal computer 18 and stored in a data file in the patient records computer 12 for this patient. Although the patient identifier is programmed into the patient identification device by the manufacturer, since that device is issued to a single patient, the patient identifier designates that specific patient. In some cases, the identification device 24 may be reusable with other patients, however at any point in time that device is issued to only one patient and thus the patient identifier designates only one patient at a time. Alternatively, the patient identifier may be programmed into the identification device 24 by the personal computer 18 in the admissions office. In that latter case, the personal computer may also download other information about the patient, such as allergies, into the patient identification device.
With reference to
Referring again to
Other information stored in the patient identification device 24 also is transmitted to the medical facility computer system 10 along with the patient identifier. For example, data indicating restrictions on where within the medical facility the patient is permitted to walk can be entered into the device. The patient identification device 24 also may be connected to other apparatus carried by the patient which measure vital signs such as temperature and heart rate, for example. That data is periodically transmitted with the first RF signal 23. Even though the range of the first RF signal 23 is relatively small, each patient identification device 24 uses a different fixed transmission interval or varies its transmission interval to avoid collisions with the signals from other patient identification devices. Such conventional signal collision avoidance techniques also enable the use of a stronger signal with a greater range.
The data stored in the patient identification device 24 are transferred via the first RF signal to the computer system 10 via a plurality of wireless data collectors 30 located throughout the medical facility. As seen in
With reference to
Upon the receipt of the first RF signal 23 by the data collector 30, its processor 35 starts a software based timer which measures the interval at which the patient is in the vicinity of that data collector, referred to herein as a “signal interval”. That timer continues to run as long as the data collector 30 continues to receive periodically a first radio frequency signal 23 containing the same patient identifier. Since the patient identification device 24 transmits the first radio frequency signal at predetermined intervals, if a defined number of those intervals pass without receiving a radio frequency signal, the processor 35 concludes that a patient has moved away. Upon reaching that conclusion, the processor terminates the timer and stores the timer's final value (the signal interval) into a location in memory 36 that is associated with the most recently stored patient identifier. Thus, the memory 36 now contains a patient data set comprising an indication of the patient, the date and time of day, and the amount of time that the patient was near the respective data collector. The determination that the patient no longer is near the data collector is based on ceasing to receive the first radio frequency signal, which in the case of a periodically transmitted, or pulsed, signal is not merely when no signal is received, as that occurs between pulses, but rather when a pulse is not received for a given amount of time that is longer than the pulse cycle.
Occasionally, the acquired data and an identification of the particular data collector 30 are transferred as a patient event record to the patient records computer 12 via a LAN interface 38 connected to the local area network 14. An exemplary patient event record 40 is graphically depicted in
As noted previously, an alternative patient identification device 24 may transmit its patient identifier only upon receiving a second radio frequency signal. In this case, each data collector 30 periodically, e.g. every second or two, transmits the second radio frequency signal and then waits for a reply from any nearby patient identification devices 24. Upon receiving the second radio frequency signal, the transceiver 28 in a patient identification device 24 signals its control circuit 26. The control circuit responds after a predefined interval by activating the transceiver 28 to send the patient identifier and any other data on the first radio frequency signal. Each patient identification device 24 waits different predefined interval before responding to avoid collisions with the signals from other patient identification devices.
That response signal is received by the data collector 30 and the data there from is stored in memory 36. As described previously that acquired data is thereafter transferred to the patient records computer 12 as a received patient event record 40.
For the second patient identification device 50, each data collector 30, shown in
Upon receiving a valid reply from a second patient identification device 50, the transceiver 34 in the data collector 30 demodulates the first radio frequency signal, thereby extracting the patient identifier. The extracted patient identifier is stored in memory 36 along with the date and time of day that the reply was received. The data collector 30 also measures the signal interval during which the same patient identification device continues to reply to the data collector's signal. Occasionally, that data and the data collector's identifier are transferred as a patient event record from the data collector 30 to the patient records computer 12.
The present system is employed to monitor the medical condition of a patient within the medical facility. Medical personnel often observe bathroom activity of a patient as an indication of normal intestinal and other bodily functions. Thus when a patient goes to a bathroom, such as one connected to the patient's room, the data collector 30 within the bathroom receives the patient identifier from the identification device 24 worn by the patient. With reference to
The patient records computer 12 then analyzes this data to produce a report indicating how many times the patient went to the bathroom, the frequency and duration of those visits, and the location of each bathroom 47 utilized. This information indicates the bodily activity of the patient, which is useful in determining the patient's recovery. For example, a patient going frequently to the restroom may indicate diarrhea, whereas a patient who does not visit the bathroom may be constipated or have renal problems. At any time that it is desired to review the status of a particular patient, nursing personnel can access the patient records computer 12 via one of the personal computers 16-18 and read a report of the information related to the bathroom activity.
Orthopedic and other patients often are prescribed an exercise regimen wherein they are to walk a certain amount of time around the halls 45 of the medical facility 49 depicted in
As an option, the patient identification device 24 depicted in
For example, when the patient 62 uses a particular piece of equipment in the medical facility, such as a treadmill 64 or other rehabilitation device, a data collector 31 adjacent that apparatus records the patient identifier along with the date and time of day, and signal interval during which the first radio frequency signal is received. This provides a record regarding the patient's use of that equipment. The signal from the accelerometer 58 also provides a measurement of the intensity of the patient's activity on the treadmill 64 or other apparatus.
Either when requested by medical personnel or at a predefined point in time, the patient records computer 12 analyzes all the patient event records for each patient to determine their motion throughout the medical facility. For example the analysis indicates where the patient traveled, how frequently the person went on a walk, and the time period of each walk. The signal intervals indicate whether the patient stopped to rest and for how long. Because data collectors 30 are placed at regular distances along the halls 45, the sequence of patient event records can be further analyzed to determine the distance traveled during each walk. The rate of patient activity is calculated from the fixed distance between data collectors 30 and the difference between the times in consecutive patient event records. This information is summarized in a report which is transmitted automatically to a particular personal computer 16 or 17 at the nursing station where the patient is being monitored. Alternatively, nursing personnel access the patient activity report by a query entered into a personal computer 16 or 17, which causes the report information to be transferred from the patient records computer 12.
In this manner, various reports about patient activity are provided to medical personnel for evaluation of the medical condition and recovery of the patient. That reporting does not require the direct observation of the patient's activity by medical personnel.
The patient monitoring also can be employed to locate non-ambulatory patients during an emergency situation in the medical facility. For example in case of a fire requiring evacuation of a portion of the facility, the personal computers 16, 17 or 18 can be used to query the computer system 10 to identify patients who still are in the building and where those patients are located. In addition a patient who becomes trapped in the building during the emergency also can be located even when that patient in outside his or her assigned room.
The foregoing description was primarily directed to preferred embodiments of the invention. Although some attention was given to various alternatives within the scope of the invention, it is anticipated that one skilled in the art will likely realize additional alternatives that are now apparent from disclosure of embodiments of the invention. Accordingly, the scope of the invention should be determined from the following claims and not limited by the above disclosure.