What Are Telesitting Technologies?

Telesitting allows providers to monitor several patients remotely, allowing patient care technicians and nurses to see other duties and patients. Prior to the pandemic, the technology was used to cut costs; with the pandemic, it has now become almost a necessity. As telesitting evolves with the advent of new technology and implementation of AI, it can do more to improve clinical outcomes, efficiencies and patient experiences.

The most common telesitting technology includes two-way audio and one-way visual. Sitters can monitor remotely or from a central location within a health system and observe patients.

In addition to cutting the already-rising costs of healthcare, this technology can also track quality of care and patient symptoms and incidents like falls. When a patient in the hospital requires continuous monitoring and care, such as patients with dementia, addiction or at risk of falls, a clinician must always stay in the patient’s room to ensure their safety.

For example, at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, this technology has been used to ease the burden on clinicians. The hospital began implementing remote video monitoring technology to create the TeleSitter program, which allows one clinical technician to monitor a dozen patients at the same time. Portable camera units mounted in patient rooms feed live video and auditory information to a central monitoring screen, where a provider can watch all the monitored patients at once. Speakers also allow them to communicate with the patients.

There are definitely regulations that must be set in place for telesitting, including nurse- and physician-led protocols for monitoring patients, procedures for intervention, and consent and privacy rules. Furthermore, telesitting is not a substitute for one-on-one safety sitting, and there must be plans also in place to transfer patients to such care if there are enough transgressions and redirects.

Other more remote patient monitoring tools work to monitor patients without the need for a clinician to be watching a patient 24/7. Somatix’s SafeBeing™ for example is a wearable AI-powered platform that helps clinicians monitor fall risk, addiction behaviors, and other behaviors without having to watch a patient directly.

The future of healthcare is officially here with telehealth technologies.