An expanding number of hospital systems in the USA are adopting “enhanced intensive care” technology — known as eICU — to let critical care doctors and nurses monitor dozens of patients at different hospitals simultaneously, much like an air traffic controller keeps track of multiple planes.

From remote control stations, dozens of patients at different hospitals are monitored via screens that display their diagnosis and progress, doctors’ notes and real-time vital statistics like heart rate and blood pressure. The remote caregivers alert their onsite counterparts to changes or potential problems through videoconferencing at the nurses’ stations.

Some predict that the technology will become part of the future of critical care, enabling hospitals to make the best use of a limited number of intensive care doctors.

“The camera is such that I can count eyelashes,” explains “remote” doctor Steven Fuhrman, enabling him to check the patient’s ventilator, intravenous medication and anything else in the room while talking to the patient and onsite staff.

Dr. Cynthia Ambres, from Kaleida Health , believes that the in-room cameras, which are not always on, are seen as reassuring by patients, rather than an invasion of privacy.

Via USA Today.