Intelligent plug-and-play digital tool for real-time surveillance of COVID-19 patients and smart decision-making in Intensive Care Units

Within only six months, over 7.4 million people have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2. In the most severely hit countries, more than 10% of infected patients have received treatment in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Insufficient data and limited knowledge on the disease as well as the lack of tools to support the intensivist in making accurate, timely and informed decisions has led to high mortality rates. Continuous surveillance, the collection and intelligent analysis of data from many sources, including ventilators and electrical impedance tomography, would allow intensivists to decide on the best suitable treatment to accelerate the recovery of the often comorbid COVID-19 patients, while reducing the burden on clinical staff and healthcare costs. This information would also increase our understanding of the yet unknown course of disease, supporting other stakeholders in the quest for new therapies. In ENVISION, our multidsciplinary public-private consortium will advance an innovative digital tool, Sandman.MD, a real-time and plug-and-play monitoring app, to an intelligent decision-support system for monitoring, prediction and treatment of COVID-19 patients in ICUs 'Äì the Sandman.ICU 'Äì reaching Technology Readiness Level 9 and ready for CE marking by the end of the project. The app has been developed by our SME partner app@work and successfully introduced by several hospitals in Germany for use during the perioperative period. Sandman.ICU will be integrated into an AI-driven data analytics suite with predictive modelling tools and enhanced with a smart alert functionality. The digital tool will be validated and demonstrated in 14 hospitals across Europe. Our Health Technology Assessment expert partner will demonstrate the economic and societal value of Sandman.ICU, while an experienced SME will manage the innovation process in view of an immediate market uptake. The rollout will be supported by the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care.