Giving Pediatric Patients A Lot of Extra TLC

Nemours Children’s Hospital

Nemours Children's Hospital, Delaware is a pediatric hospital located in Wilmington, Delaware. It is controlled by the Nemours Foundation, a non-profit organization created by philanthropist Alfred I. du Pont in 1936 and dedicated to improving the health of children. Historically, it was referred to as the A. I. duPont Institute for Crippled Children or more simply, the DuPont Institute, and provides pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults up to age 21.

Like all medical facilities, Nemours Children’s Hospital continuously monitors patients’ vital signs. But patient health can’t always be assessed by clinical data alone. Seeing the minute changes in a patient’s color or noting increased restlessness can be a sign of escalating problems. Since it would be impossible for medical staff to be in every patient’s room simultaneously, the hospital wanted to install video cameras in each room so that paramedics remotely monitoring patient vitals could also visually see if the child was in distress and call for immediate medical attention.

Nemours created a Tactical Logistics Center (TLC) – also known as the Clinical Logistics Center – where a rotating team of paramedics continually checks patient vital signs through a central monitoring system. In addition to the clinical data, the TLC integrates live streaming video from Axis network cameras in each patient’s room through Epic software.

Designed with wide dynamic range for great forensic detail in both bright and poor light conditions, the Axis cameras help paramedics detect small changes in a patient’s health, sometimes even before vital signs indicate that there is a problem.