Philips VentAssist Supports Critical Decisions for Patients on Mechanical Ventilation
Andover, Massachusetts, October 25, 2011—Royal Philips Electronics announced the release of VentAssist, a clinical decision support (CDS) tool designed to give clinicians intelligent data to better manage the care of mechanically ventilated adult patients. In critical care patients, one of the goals of the clinician is to liberate the patient from the ventilator as soon as possible to avoid ventilator associated pneumonia. Having more data available about patient ventilation can help clinicians make informed care decisions and may help avoid prolonging ventilation past the point of patient recovery.
VentAssist is an enhancement to the Respironics NM3 respiratory profile monitor, which is portable and can be used with any conventional ventilator. It is based on the need to more intuitively present information to clinicians, who are increasingly overloaded with patient data. VentAssist addresses this specific trend and associated unmet user needs, offering clinicians advice for ventilating adult patients within current clinical practice recommendations. VentAssist presents this advice as suggested changes to the ventilator settings that may improve the patient’s ventilation profile.
In a recent study, physicians were found to be in agreement with 90.5 percent of VentAssist’s clinical recommendations.[i] “The goal here is for patients to be on ventilators only as long as absolutely necessary,” said Adam Seiver, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., head of Clinical Affairs, Therapeutic Care, for Philips Healthcare. “VentAssist gives clinicians sound guidance regarding patient respiration in a way that works intuitively with a wide range of existing equipment.”
CDS tools provide clinicians with organized patient data, counseling them on making objective, evidence-based decisions. VentAssist’s advice consistently matches experienced clinicians. Another recent study showed a 91 percent correlationbetween VentAssist’s recommendations and how respiratory therapists manage ventilation in patients recovering from respiratory failure.[ii] The continuous and automatic presence of a CDS tool like VentAssist helps clinicians make quick and accurate decisions about ventilation support, which may improve patient care and reduce costs.
For more information, please visit www.philips.com/NM3.