Real-time remote physiological monitoring: The role of communication in three paradigms of inpatient care

Researchers at a large Midwest Tertiary Care Hospital have developed a remote monitoring system that supports 24-hour real-time physiological monitoring of multiple noncritical care patients from a central remote display station. The system's potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry has encouraged future plans to expand the operation. However, all of the system's characteristics and how those characteristics interact to affect qualities of interest such as worker efficiency, fatigue, and patient care have not been fully explored. A mixed-methods ethnographic approach was used to identify and more comprehensively understand characteristics of the remote monitoring systems currently in place. Analyses described three remote monitoring paradigms, emphasizing elements of communication that were perceived to impact patient care. These efforts are the first steps in continued analyses of remote monitoring systems and are important in the identification of key system elements intended to construct a fundamental remote monitoring model.