EarlySense is an Israel-based company that has developed a patient monitoring solution that involves a sensor placed under the patient’s mattress to monitor heart and respiratory rate, as well as movement and sleep. In addition to its work with hospital systems, EarlySense has expanded the uses of its contact-free continuous monitoring solutions through a partnership with telehealth company American Well.
Through the partnership, EarlySense users located in the United States will gain access to a pool of clinical experts and be able to initiate consultation sessions with doctors practicing on American Well’s Amwell service whenever users have questions or see opportunities to improve their sleep or general health. This service is available alongside EarlySense's newly launched home digital health solution, LIVE.
EarlySense's home solution includes a patented sensor that monitors and analyzes more than 50,000 data points every night, including heart rate, breathing patterns, sleep and motion, to provide a precise picture of overall health. Placed under a mattress, the sensor requires no uncomfortable wires or wristbands, enabling accurate monitoring with no change to one’s daily routine, according to the company.
“One of the key attributes of a superior telehealth experience is how informed the physician is about the patient in front of them, said Roy Schoenberg, CEO of American Well, in a prepared statement. "The ability of new technologies to collect and deliver patient information to the remote physician, during a telehealth consult, will have a dramatic impact on its value to patients. Companies like EarlySense are at the forefront of this evolution.”
In 2015, Healthcare Informatics named EarlySense one of its “Up and Comer” companies to accompany the HCI 100 list.
At the time, Tim O’Malley, the company’s president, told Healthcare Informatics that the company was actually created by its four founders as a way to monitor respiratory patterns of children with asthma in the home. Although the solution worked, they had trouble working through reimbursement issues, O’Malley said. So they expanded the use to encompass adverse event monitoring that could give early warning around specific events that had to do with heart rate, respiratory and body motion of a patient in the hospital.
O’Malley said that once a patient leaves post-anesthesia recovery, they are usually not monitored as closely. “Lots of patients should be monitored on a continual or near-continual basis, but because of staffing issues they are monitored every two to four hours,” he says. “During that four-hour period we are going to have 50,000 data points and can send messages to the mobile communication devices used by hospital staff.” EarlySense assists clinicians in early detection of patient deterioration, helping to prevent adverse events, including code blues, preventable ICU transfers, patient falls and pressure ulcers.
