Wearable button allows doctors to monitor discharged hospital patients remotely

A coin-sized ‘BioButton’ measures patients’ temperature and vital signs every minute with the same accuracy as tests carried out in the intensive care unit, experts claim.

Created by Colorado-based health tech company BioIntelliSense, the BioButton is stuck on patients near their hearts and works by collecting physiological data. 

Its makers say the device can help address several issues – from allowing nurses to easily care for more patients at once, to reducing the need to disturb patients through the night to administer tests.

It can measure over 20 vital early signs of illness, including patients’ heart rate, skin temperature, respiratory rate and other symptomatic data.

The gadget is applied in a hospital but is also used for doctors to discharge patients quickly and then monitor them remotely

The medical-grade device takes up to 1,400 passive vital sign measurements each day.

It uses an algorithm to analyze the information, which allows for early detection of things going wrong.

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2023 in Las Vegas, BioIntelliSense founder Dr James Mault told a group of reporters including DailyMail.com that the device is helping to ease the shortage of nurses in America.

Projections forecast a shortage of registered nurses by 2030. 

In the hospital, it allows a single nurse to monitor 100 patients at a time on a dashboard of the collected data.

The device also means that nurses can let hospital patients sleep throughout the night instead of waking them up. 

‘It’s one of the biggest complaints by patients who are in the hospital that they never get a good night’s sleep,” Dr. Mault said. We know sleep is really important for healing and recovery and yet now, traditionally, they’ve got a nurse walking around room to room, waking you up to measure your vital signs, and then go, “Oh, you’re fine, go back to sleep.” But now this button is sitting there quietly measuring all those vital signs.’

The gadget can help patients get out of the hospital faster as doctors can keep monitoring the BioButton data remotely.

This also reduces hospital readmission rates, Dr Mault said. He added: ‘We’ve learned because of Covid that we can start to take really good care of people in their home. And actually, the food is better and the bed is hopefully more comfortable.’