The problem to solve was identifying postpartum hemorrhage among a large number of women who were recently post-op from a cesarean delivery without a dedicated team of clinicians. The natural solution would be to add staff, but since this was Uganda, and staff was unavailable, the team turned to technology.
Alone and unsupervised, women were at risk from the common complications of cesarean delivery - a common but nonetheless major abdominal surgical procedure: hemorrhage, blood clots, hypertension, and other more rare events. On a ward with better staffing, close post-operative surveillance by trained staff would identify clinical deterioration, and someone would be available if a patient didn’t feel well. The question became: how can technology allow one or two clinicians to supervise many patients.
Patients were equipped with a wearable device that generated continuous vital signs - pulse rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, skin temperature, and their activity level. Data from all patients were available to the on-site staff on one monitor, and alarms were triggered by abnormal vital signs.
Of course there’s no substitute for bedside rounds, but when the on-duty clinician literally can’t make rounds, real-time insight into a patient’s vital signs can help identify patients genuinely in need of in-person evaluation. That’s what this clinic in Uganda found: a handful of patients in need of attention and further treatment, that made the difference between life and death.