Nightingale seeks innovative partners to deliver cutting edge healthcare solutions for wireless monitoring and identification of high-risk patients, both in hospital and at home.

Nightingale mobilises a buyers group of five leading European academic hospitals (UMC Utrecht, the Netherlands; Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden; University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom; University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium and University Hospital Aachen, Germany). The Nightingale group have received over 5 million euro in a competitive EU Horizon 2020 PCP call to challenge industry to help reduce death and disability from undetected deterioration. The Nightingale group is looking for interested parties who can develop innovative wireless, wearable technology that can be coupled with intelligent analysis software to monitor patients in the ward and at home

Clinical need

Patients die because signs of deterioration are missed. There is a huge unfulfilled need for better monitoring of vital signs to identify high-risk patients who are on general hospital wards or at home. Patient deterioration is often detected too late or not at all. One of the reasons is the decrease in intensity of vital signs monitoring and nurse attendance from the intensive care to the ward and at home. Early detection of vital instability is crucial to prevent death and disability.

Pre-commercial Procurement (PCP)

Nightingale uses the European commission’s Pre-commercial Procurement (PCP) funding scheme to challenge and stimulate European industry to develop a system to connect patients and carers to wirelessly monitor patients’ vital signs and identify high risk individuals. The available budget for the development of this innovative solution is 5.3 million euro, consisting of 3.75 million euro in the form of innovation subsidies to the industry.

Finding a solution

The solution should consist of one or more unobtrusive wireless sensors that do not interfere with the patient’s daily activities or rehabilitation. Intelligent analysis software is a key feature of the requested system, as the false alarm rate must be extremely low to be acceptable to the users. It should be well-integrated into the hospital’s electronic medical record system. The sensors should involve a mechanism that allows patients and informal carers to communicate with their healthcare team, and allow entry of qualitative data (e.g., pain and well-being scores).

Interested?

Interested parties should familiarise themselves with the Nightingale Common Challenge document and complete an interested parties questionnaire. Check the website for more information: http://www.nightingale-h2020.eu/