Intensive Care Unit Telemedicine

The American Telemedicine Association defines telemedicine as “the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients’ health status.”¹  Telemedicine services used in the intensive care setting today, which provide continuous monitoring to hundreds of patients across multiple sites, have been in use since the year 2000. The term tele-ICU is now used to describe a concept of care in which a centralized or remotely based critical care team is networked with the bedside intensive care unit (ICU) team and patient via state-of-the-art audiovisual communication and computer systems.² 

Tele-ICUs provide additional expert critical care medical and nursing services to the bedside staff to watch for trends and early signs of clinical deterioration in a patient’s status. With the increased reach of tele-ICU services throughout the country, collaboration and communication (in addition to expert clinical knowledge) are key components of a healthy...