The invention relates to the field of healthcare, particularly to time management in a healthcare facility.
Positron emission tomography (PET) examinations can typically take a fairly long time, as mentioned in a report of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine entitled “AAPM Task Group 108: PET and PET/CT Shielding Requirements”, Medical Physics, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp. 4-15, January 2006. For example, after the injection of a radiopharmaceutical, patients may have to wait for as long as 90 minutes before they are imaged in a PET scanner. Also, the data acquisition process for the scan may take up to 60 minutes. Thus the total PET procedure could take upwards of two and a half hours.
During the 90-minute waiting period, also called the uptake period, the radiopharmaceutical distributes itself through the patient's body. Physical movement must be minimized during this period so as to reduce uptake of the radiopharmaceutical into the skeletal muscles. In most PET facilities, a patient preparation room in which the patient may wait during the uptake period is a requirement. In fact, a busy PET facility may have more than one patient in the uptake area, or more than one patient preparation rooms.
Similar to PET, other imaging modalities like X-ray computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can also take comparable time periods for completion. Staying still (i.e. without voluntary physical movement) during a procedure lasting such a long time is not easy for many patients and especially difficult for children. Furthermore, some patients may be nervous, leading to an increased risk of physical movement taking place. In certain cases, such movement could lead to severe degradation in image quality, sometimes necessitating a repeat scan leading to increased radiation exposure to the patient. Repeat scans add to the cost of the procedure and increase patient throughput time, both of which are undesirable.
Often, as in the case of X-ray, PET, X-ray CT, or MR imaging, it is not possible for another person to be in the immediate vicinity of the patient in order to calm them down, advise them on when to hold still, or monitor their status. In some cases, patient movement can be reduced by distracting them from the ongoing procedure and allowing them to concentrate on something else. Alternatively, in other cases, displaying the progress of the procedure that they are undergoing could make them more compliant to a technician's instructions, thereby increasing the overall speed of the procedure. Often, in addition to (or alternatively to) displaying the progress of a particular part of the procedure, for example the time remaining in a scan, it may also be helpful to indicate what percentage of the total procedure has been completed. Examples of such a “total” procedure time could be the sum total of the uptake period, the scan time, and the recovery period in a PET scan or, in the case of a minimally-invasive image-guided biopsy procedure, the sum total of the patient preparation time, scan (or imaging data acquisition) time, time taken for the biopsy, and post-operative recovery time.
Often, it is also important to inform persons other than the patient, for example a caregiver or a relative of the patient, of the progress of the procedure. This could assist in better time management, for example by enabling the caregiver to prepare the next patient or informing the relative to complete any paperwork required to discharge the patient from the healthcare facility, etc.
In all these cases, although good time management seems to be of high importance for the clinical outcome of the procedure, no tools seem to be readily available for this. Therefore, it is desirable to have a time management tool that can keep various participants in a clinical procedure informed about the progress of the procedure. It is also desirable to have a method of managing time in a healthcare facility as well as a computer program to implement such a method.
Accordingly, a time management system for monitoring a patient in a healthcare facility is disclosed herein. The time management system comprises a monitoring device to monitor the progress of a procedure being undergone by the patient in the healthcare facility and output a monitored signal indicative of the progress of the procedure, as well as an indicator to indicate the progress of the procedure based on at least the monitored signal.
Furthermore, a method of managing time in a healthcare facility is also disclosed herein, the method comprising the steps of monitoring the progress of a procedure being undergone by a patient in the healthcare facility and outputting a monitored signal indicative of the progress of the procedure, and of indicating the progress of the procedure based on at least the monitored signal.
Furthermore, a computer program to implement a method of managing time in a healthcare facility is also disclosed herein, the computer program comprising instructions to monitor the progress of a procedure being undergone by a patient in the healthcare facility and output a monitored signal indicative of the progress of the procedure, and to indicate the progress of the procedure based on at least the monitored signal, when the computer program is run on a computer.
These and other aspects will be described in detail hereinafter, by way of example, on the basis of the following embodiments, with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Corresponding reference numerals when used in the various Figures represent corresponding elements in the Figures.
In a specific embodiment, the caregiver 110 is able to monitor, at a glance, the status of multiple patients 102p, 104p and 106p in different areas of the healthcare facility 100. The various patients may be in different stages of the procedure. For example, the second patient 104p in the waiting room 104 may be waiting for a radiopharmaceutical injection, while the first patient 102p in the uptake room 102 has already received the radiopharmaceutical injection and is in the uptake period during which the radiopharmaceutical distributes itself throughout the body. In the meantime, a third patient 106p is undergoing a PET scan in a scanning room 106. The caregiver 110 is able to monitor all the patients, as well as the stage of the procedure that each patient is currently at, on an integrated display device 108.
Monitoring multiple patients simultaneously in the healthcare facility may be achieved by tagging the patients using RFID (active/passive) tags. Other tracking mechanisms like WIFI may also be used to monitor the patients' whereabouts. By displaying this information throughout the department, the staff in the healthcare institution can have a quick overview of all relevant information. In public places, the information may be accessible to authorized personnel through self-identification on a computer console.
Often, healthcare institutions have dedicated rooms in which the patient is requested to wait for some period of time. In a PET facility, for example, the patient may have to wait for up to one and a half hours in a special waiting room to enable proper uptake of an injected radiopharmaceutical. Waiting rooms that serve such a purpose are often called uptake rooms, and the waiting period spent inside the uptake room is often called the uptake period.
Inside an uptake room, the patient first winds down and relaxes for about 30 minutes. At the end of this 30-minute relaxation period, the patient is injected with a radiopharmaceutical, following which the patient has to wait for up to 60 minutes for proper uptake of the radiopharmaceutical. During this uptake period (as well as during the preceding relaxation period), it may be useful to indicate both the occupancy status of the uptake room and the amount of waiting time left to people outside the waiting room. For example, if the uptake room 202 can accommodate 3 people, then the occupancy status can be monitored by automatically sensing and counting the number of people who enter and exit the room. Using RFID tracking technology, it is also possible to keep track of the time that each patient has spent in the uptake room. In such a case, each indicator bar in the set of indicators 202d, 204d could represent the time spent by a different patient. A similar indicator system could be used in other types of waiting rooms as well, for example a holding area where the patient is monitored while recovering from anesthesia or a recovery room where a patient is monitored after a cardiac stress test. Under these (and other similar) circumstances, it may be useful to also monitor certain physiological parameters, like the heart rate or respiratory rate, which at times could indicate the recovery level of the patient. Thus, if a patient recovers faster, there would be no need to retain him/her in the recovery room, and the procedure could be expedited accordingly.
It is sometimes necessary to display different types of information to different people involved in a medical procedure. For example, a patient may only be interested in the amount of time remaining for the scan to get done while a loved one may only be interested in getting an alert message indicating when the procedure is actually completed. The caregiver, on the other hand, will require much more detailed information about the status of the patient, time remaining for the procedure, the number and status of other patients waiting to be scanned in the scanner, and maybe even the availability of clean sheets to be used in the imaging suite 300. In fact, any parameter that could potentially alter the pace of progress of the procedure may be monitored and displayed, either in a continuous fashion, intermittently, or simply as a warning, depending on the type of the parameter.
Monitored physiological parameters may include cardiac and respiratory rates of the patient, or vibration measurements from the patient table that indicate movement of the patient. Any significant variations in these parameters need to be addressed immediately, as they could potentially slow the pace of progress of the procedure. Therefore, information of this type may be displayed on a continuous basis to a caregiver. On the other hand, an indication of the time remaining to the end-of-procedure may be shown intermittently to the patient by projecting it on the ceiling, possibly in between some other programming that is being shown. In this way the patient is sufficiently distracted from the procedure and is yet informed of the progress of the procedure, so that it does not seem inordinately long. A loved one, for example a relative or a friend, probably only needs to know the progress of the procedures at set intervals. For example, the loved one could be alerted via a text message or a graphic display when the procedure is 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% complete. Thus, everyone involved in the procedure can receive a different representation of time remaining for the procedure to finish. The caregiver could receive the exact remaining time, the patient could receive intermittent indication of progression towards the end of the procedure and the loved one could receive an alert when the procedure is completed.
A personal indicator device given to the loved one indicates the approximate time remaining for the completion of the procedure. Having this indicator device with them, a loved one is free to walk around within the healthcare facility, e.g. the cafeteria, information centre, library, etc., and does not need to sit and wait in an (often crowded) waiting room, which can be a distressing, and sometimes overwhelming, experience. The loved one is alerted remotely when the procedure finishes. The alert may be a simple buzz, message, or light indication.
Alternatively, the indication may be graphical or textual as shown in
The indication of the progress of the procedure may be a projection on a screen or wall, or on a computer monitor. Alternatively, it may be a physical object, for example a dial similar to a fuel gauge in an automobile, which indicates the status by the position of a pointer.
It may be noted that a sound trigger 504 (i.e., an audio indicator) like a beep that changes in volume or a song that changes in tempo may be used instead of a visual trigger such as the graphical display shown in the
The patient table 608 may have embedded motion or vibration sensors (not shown) that continuously monitor the patient for motion. As excessive motion could degrade image quality and reduce its diagnostic value, the patient needs to be warned when such motion occurs. An effective way of doing this is to suddenly change the graphic projected on the ceiling, thereby catching the patient's attention. For example, if the time remaining for the procedure is being displayed as a circle of proportionate size on the ceiling, and the patient is watching it in anticipation of the end of the procedure, a sudden increase in the size of the graphic could warn the patient to hold still, as otherwise it would take longer for the procedure to end. Thus, the graphic could provide an incentive for the patient to hold still and thereby increase the pace of progress of the scan. Of course, the graphic could be any other representative figure, for example any of the depictions shown in
While it is a fact that the patient often needs to hold as still as possible during a scan, it is also often the case that patients should not relax so much that they go to sleep.
This could be for a number of reasons like the need to respond to a caregiver's instructions or due to the fact that involuntary movements that occur naturally during sleep cannot be controlled. To prevent the patient from going to sleep, the graphic 606 could be made more interesting, for example a movie or news clipping or an animated cartoon, etc., that is combined with the appropriate soundtrack. Of course, instead of the visual triggers mentioned above, audio triggers may be used, in which the movie or news clipping is interrupted, and a voice or a loud beep reminds the patient to hold still.
The control system may be implemented as a combination of hardware and software, for example in the form of a computer program running on a computer. The computer program may reside on a computer readable medium, for example a CD-ROM, a DVD, a floppy disk, a memory stick, a magnetic tape, a hard disk, or any other tangible medium that is readable by a computer. The computer program may also be a downloadable program that is downloaded or otherwise transferred to the computer, for example via the Internet. The computer program may be transferred to the computer via a transfer means such as an optical drive, a magnetic tape drive, a floppy drive, a USB or other computer port, an Ethernet port, etc.
The order in the described embodiments of the disclosed devices or the described implementations of the disclosed methods is not mandatory. A person skilled in the art may change the order of steps or perform steps concurrently using threading models, multi-processor systems or multiple processes without departing from the disclosed concepts.
It should be noted that the above-mentioned embodiments illustrate rather than limit the invention, and that those skilled in the art will be able to design many alternative embodiments without departing from the scope of the appended claims. In the claims, any reference signs placed between parentheses shall not be construed as limiting the claim. The word “comprising” does not exclude the presence of elements or steps other than those listed in a claim. The word “a” or “an” preceding an element does not exclude the presence of a plurality of such elements. The disclosed methods can be implemented by means of hardware comprising several distinct elements, and by means of a suitably programmed computer. In the system claims enumerating several means, several of these means can be embodied by one and the same item of computer readable software or hardware. The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutually different dependent claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures cannot be used to advantage.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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06124759.9 | Nov 2006 | EP | regional |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IB07/54769 | 11/23/2007 | WO | 00 | 5/19/2009 |