Israeli company develops wrist monitor to remotely supervise quarantined patients
With those in quarantine need to be isolated as much as possible, the wrist-sensor pulse oximeter has the ability to monitor the vitals and symptoms of an entire building under quarantine from afar.
By ZACHARY KEYSERNursing Home for Anusi Mashhad, Herzliya(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Kfar Saba-based Oxitone, an Israeli med-tech company currently focusing on remote continuous care solutions, has recently begun employing its wrist-worn pulse oximeter for continuous blood oxygen monitoring in nursing homes to remotely supervise quarantined residents amid the coronavirus pandemic.Considering those in quarantine need to be isolated as much as possible so as to reduce the chance of transmitting the virus, either between residents of the facility or to the larger public in general, remote monitoring these patients could offer a solution to significantly raise the odds of keeping the virus contained.On this matter, the wrist-sensor pulse oximeter, shaped like a watch, has the ability to monitor the vitals and symptoms of an entire building under quarantine, through its connection to a cloud based portal that can supervised by a remote physician.During the first coronavirus wave in Israel, Oxitone deployed their solution at Jerusalem's Migdal Nofim Home to monitor multiple 80 to 90-year-old quarantined residents, which they added showed promising results.In some occurrences, COVID-19 patients can suffer from a condition known as "silent hypoxia," wherein the patient doesn't appear to be suffering from shortness of breath, however, their oxygen levels are abnormally low - being in a stable condition one minute and falling into in a life-threatening state the next.More importantly, the problem with this condition is the patient won't know they their are in need of air.Normally people who suffer from shortness of breath experience low oxygen levels accompanied by high carbon dioxide levels.However, within the case of silent hypoxia, many physicians believe that the reason why patients who experience this condition do not develop symptoms linked to shortness of breath - such as rapid breathing - is because their carbon dioxide levels do not vary and therefore no abnormal external responses would be emitted by the patient signaling to the attending physician that there is a problem - making it difficult to detect without round the clock supervision.In lieu of a physician manually tracking a patient's vitals those in quarantine, remote tracking solutions such as oximeters could make it possible to leave quarantined patients in a deeper isolation, while monitoring vitals and symptoms from afar..While Oxitone does note compliance issues, with patients sometimes refusing to be monitored 24/7 with a wrist-worn oximeter, in addition to some "technical and other monitoring challenges that are yet to be solved," they believe in a case such as Jerusalem's Migdal Nofim Home - where numerous patients agreed to embrace the solution - that it could be using in thousands of nursing homes worldwide to prevent the spread of the coronavirus while saving the lives of the at-risk residents.
