Inpatient RPM Comes Into Focus at UT Health San Antonio

“The virtual nurse is really critical now to our care delivery,” Sankary says, pointing to gains in intake and discharge processing as well as care coordination, medication management and telesitting.

“A virtual nurse is able to immediately jump in, as opposed to a patient pressing the call button light on the pillow speaker and waiting 5, 10, 15 minutes for a floor nurse who may be tied up in some other activity to come over there,” he points out. “We actually have on the pillow speaker a virtual nurse button. A patient can hit that virtual nurse button and get somebody in the room instantaneously.”

Sankary is quick to point out that while virtual nursing is a key element to the platform, it’s not the whole platform. It’s more along the lines of a virtual care program, integrating not only nursing services but also housekeeping, physician visits, specialist consults and even family visits.

Key elements of the platform are the in-room television, which combines entertainment and information with virtual care, and a high-resolution camera that can, among other things, keep an eye on the patient when no one else is in the room, help facilitate virtual visits and even zoom in to capture the information on a medicine bottle, IV pump or vial of insulin.

The idea, Sankary says, is to create a virtual network around patients that can handle care management and coordination on a round-the-clock basis, relieving clinicians of the burden of getting care done only when they’re in the room. In addition, it can be in the room with clinicians, offering an extra set of eyes, answering questions and supporting anyone who might need a little bit of help.

For example, Sankary says, virtual nurses can help with documentation when those in the room are engaged in hands-on care, such as during codes, and they can track how often the patient gets out of bed, uses the bathroom, or eats their meals.

Sankary says the platform reduces stress on nurses, from those worn down by a long day to new nurses needing a little support, while giving veteran nurses an opportunity to move away from tiring floor work.

The next step, he says, will be in adding ambient AI to capture conversations and facilitate documenting.

“It’s only going to expand with conversational AI,” he says.

Looking to the future

He notes that leadership is continuing to study how the platform affects workflows, as well as how clinicians – both nurses and doctors – use it to access patient data. From the outset, he says, they tried to plan for both the “known unknowns” and prepare for any “unknown unknowns.”

But just as importantly, he says, the platform has to be seamless and instinctive. The ideal is that both clinicians and patients know it’s there without actually knowing that they’re using it. It’s just a normal part of the care routine.

Then they’ll look beyond the hospital.

“How do you leverage this at home?” Sankary asks. “How can you leverage this technology in a clinic visit? And then you start to look at the other technologies that have come into people’s homes. It’s no longer fantasy – this is reality.”