FDA clears GE Healthcare's CARESCAPE Monitor B650 patient monitoring solution

GE Healthcare today announced FDA clearance of the CARESCAPE™ Monitor B650, a flexible patient monitoring solution that supports efficient clinical decision-making. The CARESCAPE Monitor B650 improves data integration and connectivity by directly linking to the GE Healthcare CARESCAPE portfolio of monitoring products-including the latest bedside, central station and transport monitors-as well as existing GE Healthcare monitors and peripheral third-party devices.

“Many hospitals are demanding facility-wide, patient monitoring implementations that enable data continuity, without compromising individual care area demands”

Traditionally, hospitals have generally implemented patient monitors on a care area by care area basis, making it difficult to connect disparate systems across the clinical setting. To address this challenge, GE Healthcare now offers an integrated, enterprise-wide patient monitoring platform consisting of the new, flexible CARESCAPE Monitor B650 and the recently introduced CARESCAPE Monitor B850 for the most critically ill patients. The CARESCAPE monitors are part of the CARESCAPE portfolio of products—a collection of highly integrated medical devices, communications networks and IT systems—that work together to transform streams of unorganized patient data into meaningful, easily accessible clinical intelligence.

The new platform helps hospitals standardize patient monitoring systems across the enterprise. Because similar parameters are used across CARESCAPE Monitor B650, CARESCAPE Monitor B850 and the full GE Healthcare monitoring platform, clinical measurements remain consistent between care areas, allowing for "apples to apples" comparisons. The platform also enables the ability to customize clinical information by care area and clinician preference. It supports workflow continuity, ensuring that monitoring capabilities can flex to varying patient acuity levels.

"Many hospitals are demanding facility-wide, patient monitoring implementations that enable data continuity, without compromising individual care area demands," said David Ataide, vice president and general manager of Patient Care Solutions, GE Healthcare. "The CARESCAPE Monitor B650 supports our commitment to standardizing patient monitoring on a single, integrated platform and improving clinician access to patient information at the point of care. GE Healthcare recognizes that efficient access to quality patient information supports fast clinical decision-making, which may lead to improved patient outcomes."

Developed with tens of thousands of hours of testing, the CARESCAPE Monitor B650 is intuitive to use. It enables efficient clinical decision-making via the following benefits:

• Ease of clinical customization: To tailor the monitor for a specific patient condition or caregiver specialty, clinicians can simply use customized patient profiles within the monitor or plug in a new clinical measurement module. Traditionally, caregivers needed to move a different, specialized patient monitor to the point of care.
• Enhanced usability: The CARESCAPE Monitor B650 includes an intuitive touch screen interface, as well as a barcode reader, enabling fast and secure patient data input. From the CARESCAPE Monitor B650, caregivers can view data and alarms from remote monitors without leaving the patient's bedside.
• Ease of installation and training: With the CARESCAPE Monitor B650, a hospital can easily duplicate hospital-specific clinical settings across all patient monitors on the network. Because the CARESCAPE Monitor B650 leverages similar software interfaces as other devices on the GE Healthcare enterprise monitoring platform, training can be streamlined.
• Monitor mobility: The monitor can run via a wireless local area network and can be battery operated, reducing the need for wall cables. The CARESCAPE Monitor B650 continuously transmits data to the central station, even when the monitor is moved while connected to a patient.

The CARESCAPE Monitor B650 combines the strong clinical heritage of Datex-Ohmeda's anesthesia and Marquette Electronics' cardiac expertise. To preserve patient monitoring investments already made by thousands of GE Healthcare customers worldwide, the CARESCAPE Monitor B650 is compatible with existing Marquette and Datex-Ohmeda products. GE Healthcare's innovation strategy provides for a significant level of backwards compatibility, allowing hospitals to leverage prior technology investments while updating monitors in the areas of greatest clinical need.

Source GE Healthcare