El Camino Health is the first health system in the world to use FloPatch, a new blood flow monitoring technology that will help improve sepsis patient outcomes. Courtesy El Camino Health.
“Timing is crucial when caring for patients with sepsis,” says Cheryl Reinking, Chief Nursing Officer at El Camino Health. “Our nurses have seen firsthand how effective FloPatch is in monitoring the effectiveness of treatment in deteriorating patients, especially those with sepsis and low blood pressure.”
In partnership with Flosonics Medical, the developer of FloPatch, El Camino Health has been piloting the FloPatch technology for the past year at Fogarty Innovation, the medical technology and startup incubator that operates out of El Camino Hospital.
“Our nurses immediately loved it and helped decide where in the hospital the technology would be the best fit,” says Reinking.
FloPatch is a device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It provides fast and consistent measurements to help clinicians track a patient’s heart function.
“Once placed on a patient’s neck, the FloPatch continuously assesses blood flow in the carotid arteries, which are the major blood vessels that supply blood to the brain, neck, and face,” says Reinking. “FloPatch then wirelessly transmits that data to a secure iOS mobile application, providing clinicians with actionable, real-time data at the bedside.”
When a patient with sepsis arrives at the hospital, the first critical step is to treat them with IV fluids, the El Camino announcement stated. But it can be challenging to administer the right amount of fluid, and too much can cause major complications for patients.
“While tools currently available can measure fluid response, they are cumbersome and time consuming to use,” says Reinking. “FloPatch’s advanced analytics engine quantifies and displays changing metrics over the course of an assessment and helps clinicians deliver more precise fluid treatment and, ultimately, better care to patients.”
El Camino Health cited a study that found four to five patients will avoid potentially dangerous fluid overload for every ten FloPatch uses.
The FloPatch is the latest technology to benefit from El Camino Health’s medical technology accelerator program out of Fogarty Innovation (FI). This six-month-long mentoring program helps early-stage companies grow.
With guidance from their lead FI mentors, Mike Regan, Chief Innovation Officer, and Dr. Zach Edmonds, Strategic Adviser, the Flosonics team worked directly with El Camino Health clinicians to better understand the patient journey and determine the best clinical use for their groundbreaking technology.
