On the early morning of March 21, a rapid response team arrived at the bedside of a patient in his 70s, identified as A, just three minutes after his oxygen saturation plummeted in the respiratory medicine ward at Severance Hospital. Tests confirmed a possible worsening of respiratory failure, and immediate ventilator treatment prevented further deterioration. In the same month, another patient in his 50s, identified as B, who was admitted to the cardiology ward, was examined within five minutes after signs of falling blood pressure and decreasing heart rate were detected. After reviewing the results, medical staff promptly administered drug therapy and stabilized B's condition. These cases illustrate the application of "PRISM," a system Severance Hospital began full-scale operation of on the 8th of this month.
Severance Hospital said Wednesday it has built PRISM, a new medical system that monitors key health indicators such as blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation around the clock and immediately alerts medical staff when abnormal signs are detected, and is applying it to all inpatients across every ward.
Previously, checking a patient's vital signs required reviewing monitors on each medical device individually. PRISM standardizes the data transmission language of medical devices that use different data formats and delivery methods, consolidating the information onto a single screen. The system enables real-time management of patient health information measured by various medical devices on a single platform, regardless of manufacturer. Departing from the previous practice of measuring vital signs at intervals of up to eight hours, the system collects biometric data without interruption, allowing warning signs to be detected far more quickly than before and enabling preemptive responses. The advantage is particularly pronounced in managing patients at risk of deteriorating into critical condition.
PRISM was jointly developed by Severance Hospital and medical solution firm ACK. In February last year, Severance Hospital formed a "Medical Device Information Integration Task Force" and began building an integrated system that connects data from various medical devices within the hospital. The aim was to minimize the chance of missing the golden hour by mere minutes, given that inpatients' conditions often deteriorate rapidly within a short period. The hospital operates a rapid response team called "WeSave," consisting of seven specialists and 15 nurses, in three shifts. The rapid response team monitors data 24 hours a day alongside ward nurses and attending physicians, and is dispatched to the relevant ward immediately upon detecting abnormal signals. Even when ward medical staff are briefly engaged in other tasks, the rapid response team continuously watches over inpatients' conditions, tightening the surveillance network.
The introduction of PRISM is expected to bring changes not only to patient safety but also to medical staff workflows. As patient data is automatically recorded and shared, repetitive manual entry tasks decrease, and the risk of data errors is also reduced. Because all medical staff can check the same data simultaneously, the collaborative care process becomes faster and more accurate. Even during night shifts or on-call situations, patient conditions can be checked from outside the ward, significantly expanding the scope of medical staff response. Nurses, who work closest to patients, face less pressure of missing changes in patient condition and can work in a systematic monitoring environment. The foundation has been laid to simultaneously improve both the efficiency and safety of overall hospital operations.
Severance Hospital plans to further advance the system by linking it with artificial intelligence (AI)-based prediction technology. Beyond simply checking current conditions, the goal is to develop the system to predict patient deterioration in advance based on accumulated data and alert medical staff.
"A system that gathers and integrally manages all patient health information across all wards in one place 24 hours a day reflects our determination to immediately respond to even the smallest signals that could lead to serious conditions," Severance Hospital Director Lee Kang-young said. "The integration of medical device data will not stop at being a simple system improvement but will become a change that fundamentally transforms patient safety."
