Masimo and University Hospitals (UH), one of the largest health systems in Northeast Ohio, today jointly announced Masimo SafetyNet, an innovative, economically scalable patient management system designed to help clinicians care for patients remotely.

The telehealth solution combines tetherless Radius PPG™ pulse oximetry, driven by breakthough Masimo SET® Measure-through Motion and Low Perfusion™ technology, with Doctella™, a secure, home-based, remote patient surveillance platform accessible from a patient’s iOS or Android smartphone or smart device.

The COVID-19 health emergency has significantly increased the demand for remote monitoring and patient engagement solutions in multiple settings. To proactively prepare for a surge in COVID-19 patients while maintaining the safety of other patients and providers, this new solution allows UH and other hospitals to expand patient monitoring to the home or to other facility locations set up temporarily to care for the increased demand. Current WHO guidelines recommend the monitoring of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients’ oxygen saturation (SpO2), respiration rate (RR), and temperature, and Masimo and UH are meeting this increased demand by adapting existing technology to deliver a secure remote solution.

Masimo SafetyNet offers care teams a single-platform solution that couples a secure, cloud-based surveillance platform with clinically proven SET® pulse oximetry, estimated to be used on more than 200 million patients each year.1 In addition to SpO2, Radius PPG is capable of continuously monitoring pulse rate (PR), perfusion index, PVi®, and RRp®, respiration rate from the photoplethysmograph.

Patients can be sent home with a multi-day supply of single-patient-use Radius PPG sensors and access to the Doctella mobile app, designed for easy, intuitive patient use via a digital home-care plan, or CareProgram, that aligns with expert guidance on COVID-19. Radius PPG shares its SpO2, PR, and RRp data with Doctella using secure Bluetooth® wireless technology. In addition, Doctella can manually collect other physiological data, such as temperature. Twice daily, or as directed, the Doctella CareProgram actively notifies patients to answer questions such as, “are you having trouble breathing?” and “what is your temperature?”, and securely pushes these responses along with physiological monitoring data to hospital-based clinicians for evaluation. The Doctella clinician portal allows providers to easily track patient compliance, helping them identify when intervention may be needed, as well as providing insight to help providers prioritize patients. CarePrograms are fully customizable to accommodate each institution’s protocols, each patient’s needs, and any changes in COVID-19 guidance—and can be updated through the cloud by providers even after being deployed, for maximum flexibility as situations evolve.

“We appreciate Masimo’s immediate collaboration to stand up this innovative platform that will significantly aid in our ability to scale up remote monitoring and meet the demand for patient care while addressing capacity and safety issues,” explained Peter Pronovost, MD, UH Chief Clinical Transformation Officer. “For our patients with congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), we can provide them with this remote monitoring capability so they do not risk a COVID-19 infection by being near potentially infected patients. Similarly, for patients with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, we can appropriately isolate them from other patients while ensuring they have the access to state-of-the-art care for managing their health through the recovery process.”

Joe Kiani, Founder and CEO of Masimo, said, “We thank the nurses and doctors who are bravely toiling in hospitals taking care of us all during this pandemic. We are delighted that we can help them triage and effectively take care of COVID-19 patients the best they can with Masimo SafetyNet. It has been a delight to work with UH to bring this technology to the health care industry to help them address the challenges they face during this unprecedented time.”

“This alliance demonstrates UH’s strategy to drive improvements in population health,” said Daniel I. Simon, MD, UH Chief Clinical & Scientific Officer and President, UH Cleveland Medical Center. “By deploying ‘outside-in’ tactics and forming this partnership with Masimo, our patients receive cutting edge treatment approaches while we help enhance the product for future users and industry transformation.”UH plans to begin piloting this system next week.