| Hopkins, Lockheed aim to modernize the ICU |
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The Baltimore Sun December 25, 2011
Johns Hopkins intensive care nurse Nelly E. Lopez spends so much of her workday monitoring patient distress alarms that she sometimes hears phantom beeps even when she is no longer on the job.
Hopkins doctors say Lopez's "alarm fatigue" shows what is wrong with hospital intensive care units, which they describe as fragmented systems made up of dozens of machines that don't talk to one another. The constant alarms, invasive instruments and unwieldy number of machines create a stressful, and sometimes unsafe, environment for the medical staff as well as ICU patients, who are the ones in most critical condition.
Hopkins has a plan to bring ICUs into the 21st century and has joined forces with an unorthodox partner, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, to make it happen.
The hospital's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality has entered into an agreement with Lockheed to combine the two institutions' expertise to create an updated, more efficient ICU. They hope an improved ICU will have widespread benefits: enhanced patient safety, reduced costs, fewer medical errors and a smoother work environment for hospital employees.
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