UK Edition
Broadmoor Hospital has installed 178 cameras to help reduce the need for staff visits to check on patients and stop the spread of coronavirus.
The cameras, by British start-up Oxehealth, are able to monitor vital signs remotely, such as pulse and breathing rate, and alert staff of unusual activity.
Their optical sensors can pick up 'micro blushes' that are invisible to the human eye and can also measure chest movements to find out if a patient is struggling to breathe.
Staff can then observe patients through the cameras and choose whether they will enter their rooms.
Hugh Lloyd-Jukes, the chief executive of Oxehealth, said a “core use” for the company’s technology is removing the need for staff to carry out as many in-person inspections.
“You don't have to go into the room to check on their safety,” he said.
Leeanne McGee, the director of high secure and forensic services at West London NHS Trust, which runs Broadmoor Hospital, said the installation of Oxehealth technology will “help provide additional support to staff to enhance patient experience as well as ensuring even better patient safety within a high secure environment.”
Broadmoor Hospital has capacity for up to 240 patients in its new high security £250m site which replaced the original 150-year-old Victorian building last year.
Oxehealth is hoping to sell its technology to further hospitals across the country and is also selling the cameras to prisons and police forces.
Mr Lloyd-Jukes said prisons would benefit from using Oxehealth cameras because they could cut down on the need to transfer prisoners to hospitals.
“You're trying to help manage the health of someone without having to step them out into a hospital because of the difficulties that creates for them and the prison service,” he said.
Oxehealth plans to eventually sell its camera technology directly to consumers so that it can be installed in people’s homes, but the company’s chief executive said the UK doesn’t yet have enough carers to make the system work.
“You need a carer who is able to intervene,” he said. “At the moment, there isn't the infrastructure in the UK to do that to people who are in their own home.”
More than 540 health and social care workers in England and Wales have died during the coronavirus pandemic, the second-highest global total for healthcare worker deaths behind Russia. Amnesty International has called for an "urgent public inquiry" into the deaths.