Reposted with permission from Oracle.
AvaSure, a provider of virtual nursing and virtual sitting solutions to more than 1,100 hospitals in North America, selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s GPU technology for its best-in-class performance, security, and cost-effectiveness as they scale AI for their AvaSure TeleSitter® solution.
Amid staffing shortages and rising pressure to control costs, virtual care has become essential for hospitals looking to adapt. Clinical teams are investing in technology that enables them to use resources more efficiently, respond faster to patient needs, and focus on the work they love even as nursing talent remains in short supply.
The Essential Role of Virtual Care
One area where virtual care gained an early and permanent foothold in clinical workflow is sitting. For decades, patients at risk of falls, elopement, or self-harm required in-person, 1:1 sitters to help avoid adverse events. AvaSure pioneered virtual sitting 15 years ago with the introduction of the TeleSitter solution, which allows a remote virtual safety attendant to monitor up to 16 patients at a time. As a result, something that cost health systems $20–30 an hour was reduced to $2–3 an hour, while reducing falls by over 50%. Done right, these solutions give patients the care they expect from world-class hospitals with the connectivity they’re used to in their day-to-day lives.
Scaling the Reach of Continuous Monitoring with AI
The staffing optimization and patient safety results speak for themselves, and now, the health care industry is working to deliver these same benefits to more patients. At times, over 20% of patients in a hospital could benefit from virtual monitoring, driving the need for technology to enhance efficiency and scalability. All eyes are on AI to help solve this challenge, particularly computer vision, which employs algorithms to detect patient risks like attempting to get out of bed, leaving the room, or attempting self-harm. When combined with an intelligent virtual care platform, this technology delivers notifications to the virtual safety attendant to augment their efforts and more easily catch patient safety events.
AvaSure’s computer vision AI reduces the burden on virtual safety attendants and scales the effectiveness of continuous monitoring programs. AvaSure AI utilizes computer vision to identify patients at risk of falls or elopement, directing the virtual safety attendant’s focus to those in need, enhancing their efforts and helping ensure timely detection of patient safety events.
AI is poised to make a significant impact on healthcare delivery when deployed thoughtfully. However, when implemented carelessly, it can exacerbate rather than resolve issues. AI must deliver alerts that clinicians can trust because they rely on it to make their jobs easier, not harder. Most importantly, clinicians need to trust the accuracy and reliability of technology to augment human ability when patient safety is concerned.
A technology-driven approach that overlooks clinical risks can hinder adoption efforts and alienate frontline caregivers. False positives betray their confidence, while false negatives can endanger patients. For this reason, AvaSure upholds stringent safety standards to combat alert fatigue in our development and use of AI. Additionally, we prioritize partnerships with top vendors with proven best-in-class capabilities, integrating them into offerings for optimal performance and reliability.
A Partnership for Clinically-Led Innovation
AvaSure has partnered with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to power its AI offerings. AvaSure chose OCI to optimize performance of its AI models, build for scale, and control costs. Oracle’s differentiated offerings for hybrid and multicloud allow frictionless interaction with other AvaSure Virtual Care applications. The partnership delivers a centralized, scalable infrastructure that supports live AI-model learning across deployments and, ultimately, more accuracy to support observers.
OCI allows AvaSure to layer an increasing number of AI algorithms on top of falls and elopement prevention. As new AI models are created for self-harm, rounding, and workplace violence, virtual care teams can be trained on the addition of new alerts, notifications, and benefits.
AvaSure is actively deploying advanced AI-enabled solutions across its install base of over 1,100 hospitals. This initiative is geared toward further empowering human observers, who remain integral to ensuring patient safety and well-being. The decision to incorporate AI technologies into AvaSure’s framework is deeply rooted in the organization’s commitment to aligning with the essential role caregivers play in delivering comprehensive patient care. Despite the remarkable capabilities of AI in identifying specific behaviors and potential risks, AvaSure firmly believes in the irreplaceable value of the “human in the loop” element within healthcare settings.
The emphasis on human involvement extends beyond risk detection and false positive and negative mitigation to the additional benefits from the human moments in virtual care, such as an observer wishing a nervous patient luck on an upcoming surgery. While AvaSure AI technology excels in tracking predefined behavioral patterns, acknowledging the multifaceted nature of patient monitoring is essential. Human observers possess a unique ability to discern subtle cues and deviations in patient behavior, often detecting critical events that may elude even the most advanced automated systems.
Through their vigilant oversight, observers using AvaSure technology have successfully averted numerous adverse outcomes, ranging from medical emergencies, such as strokes and choking incidents, to safety hazards like fires and unauthorized substance ingestion. Human observers bring a level of empathy and responsiveness that complements the analytical prowess of AI technology. By fostering genuine connections and leveraging real-time human insights, AvaSure aims to cultivate environments where patients feel genuinely cared for and supported.
The Future is Bright
As health systems deploy AI, AvaSure also brings to bear its strong support that assists nursing teams with change management, to develop a long-term virtual care strategy that can achieve measurable results in patient well-being. This clinical focus is matched with powerful analytics and an intelligence layer that makes it easy to report clear, measurable outcomes.
Healthcare systems can seamlessly provide virtual care as part of the overall patient experience, while working within the constraints of their technology budget, resources, and regulatory environment. Nursing and IT leadership collaborate closely to achieve this goal, choosing strategic partners like AvaSure and Oracle that understand their needs and can deliver the technology to support them. While virtual sitting and virtual nursing have the most immediate impact, the continued advancements of AvaSure’s virtual care platform can set up healthcare leaders for long-term success: safer facilities, better outcomes, and a renewed joy in caregiving for the staff that patients rely on every day.
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Written by:
Dan Spellman, Global AI Cloud Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences
Dan leads AI Cloud engagements for healthcare and life sciences at Oracle, as well as Oracle Cloud’s partnership with NVIDIA for HCLS. This aligns a life-long love of cutting-edge technology, with a passion for applying that to help transform healthcare and save lives. To discuss using AI/ML & Accelerated Computing (GPU compute) for your healthcare or life science organization, please email dan.spellman@oracle.com.
Jacob Hansen, Chief Product Officer, AvaSure
Jacob Hansen joined AvaSure after serving as Vice President of product management at UK-based eClinical company CALYX. Jacob has extensive experience in developing product management maturity, instituting new product processes, and strategic analysis. He has managed product teams and products themselves across healthcare, including clinical workflow, patient throughput, care communication, population health services, and others.
