VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Sentara Healthcare is expanding a new technology in Virginia and North Carolina.
Next week, new remote cameras will help doctors, nurses and patients at Sentara Healthcare.
“I wish when my mother had a stroke and she was in Norfolk General -- I wish we had that option then. Instead, I stayed 24 hours, seven days a week with her," said Sentara's Patient and Family Advisory Councilmember Debra Cannon.
The goal is to have 108 remote cameras across 12 Sentara hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina by the end of the month. Some healthcare facilities in Northern Virginia have already started using this technology.
Now, officials are opening a remote camera monitoring site in Virginia Beach.
“Our technicians who will be sitting in this department can monitor patients for safety by preventing them from getting off the bed, pulling at lines, if they altered mental status to make sure they can be redirected," said Sentara System Director for Resource Allocation Charlene Bridges.
Bridges is in charge of the remote camera program and is also a nurse. She said the high-resolution cameras can monitor patients’ physical conditions such as choking, difficulty breathing, pain or other immediate issues.
They can also monitor several patients at once, Bridges said.
She said patient privacy is their top priority.
“If there’s a situation where the patient is getting a bath or there’s a procedure going on in the room or even if there’s a conversation that they don’t want anybody to listen to, we can do video privacy as well as audio privacy," said Bridges.
Cannon knows firsthand how the cameras work when she visited a family friend.
“It was just amazing to see how she brightened up. That, she had somebody to talk to and she really liked that," said Cannon.
A spokesperson for Sentara Healthcare said the new technology helps break language barriers. The cameras allow technicians to create automated responses in several languages.
This remote camera monitoring site goes active starting Monday.