Fremont, CA: Because of the pandemic, there has been an increase in the use of artificial intelligence in various businesses. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a valuable tool that could be used to improve patient safety

AvaSure®, the inventor of the TeleSitter® solution and the market leader in patient safety monitoring, and Equum Medical, a leading telehealth-enabled acute care professional clinical services company, have entered into a new strategic partnership to help hospitals address the nurse staffing shortage and slow a sharp increase in adverse events in inpatient care.

Today's hospitals face the challenge of doing more with less. According to a recent study, 30 percent of healthcare workers have quit or been laid off since the pandemic began, and 31 percent of the remaining workforce is considering changing jobs. Prior to the pandemic, it was predicted that over 1 million registered nurses would leave the workforce by 2030, with the majority retiring. With the availability of resources at the bedside under threat, adverse events such as patient falls are on the rise. According to studies, nearly 1 million patient falls occur in healthcare settings each year, with one-third of them being preventable, costing the US healthcare system nearly $34 billion. With an aging population and rising hospital operating costs, nurse safety and patient experience are jeopardized unless new models that extend access to resources, such as telehealth, are implemented.

Equum and AvaSure will collaborate to provide an affordable, simple-to-implement, and highly effective virtual monitoring solution. Equum's new Virtual Care Collaboration Center in Nashville will host monitoring services. The service will make use of AvaSure's hardware and software solutions, including a wider range of room monitoring devices that provide continuous uptime from thousands of hospital rooms in any geographic area.

"This partnership of telehealth leaders responds to customer demand for cost-effective solutions that make the most of increasingly scarce nursing resources," stated Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, AvaSure's chief innovation officer. "We want to free nurses to practice at the top of their license, providing clinical care instead of worrying constantly about fall-risk patients or responding to routine patient requests."