CLEW
Offering AI-Driven Predictive Analytics for Better Critical Care

Pandemic-driven talent shortages are leading hospitals to seek Tele-ICUs that can provide high-quality critical care, boost patient outcomes, and reduce costs while alleviating the pressure on caregivers.

CLEW, an AI/data analytics provider, addresses this need through its HIPAA-compliant CLEWICU, an AI-Powered Virtual ICU platform, which increases ICU capacity and enables proactive care. It enhances clinical outcomes, improves patient flow, and reduces false alarm burdens with complete situational knowledge of the present and anticipated patient statuses across units, care settings, and electronic medical records (EMRs) like Epic, Cerner, and Evident. The solution also supports rapid deployment, whether implemented on the cloud (Microsoft Azure) or on-premises.

CLEW’s virtual ICU platform operates with an FDA class II medical device and CE clearance for the U.S. and European markets. It is cloud-hosted, web-based, and scalable, with a user interface that gives clinicians rapid situational awareness without navigating numerous screens.

Through its cloud-based backend, CLEWICU aids hospitals of all sizes in achieving their desired ICU efficiencies without the significant infrastructure investments typically required by former client-server-based solutions. In addition, unlike conventional Tele-ICU systems that require clinicians to follow highly convoluted processes to integrate emerging scientific advancements, CLEWICU enables users to easily specify and adopt preferred best practices.

“Our approach toward customers is to be responsive and nimble by quickly integrating data science into clinical support for the bedside without having to develop a completely new iteration of the Virtual ICU system,” says Joel Gochberg, VP of business development of CLEW.

A cloud-based platform built with an emphasis on scalability, CLEWICU is agnostic to most patient monitoring and life support devices and electronic health records, making it suitable for virtual ICU centers and distributed operations of all sizes. It is also independent of audio-visual capabilities and compatible with various AV vendors.

Gochberg notes that most health systems have a mothership hospital, which is often an academic medical center or a tertiary care/quaternary care facility well-staffed with intensivists but constantly at 100 percent occupancy. In contrast, satellite hospitals have ventilators, ICU beds, monitors, critical care nurses, and other life-supporting equipment but need better intensivist coverage. Overlaying a Virtual ICU platform like CLEW into this system can enable intensivists to remotely participate in decision-making and improve the placement and management of critically ill patients.

One of CLEW’s strong suits is its AI-based classification model that predicts which patient will not require intervention within an eighthour window. This low-risk patient classification allows providers to precisely allocate additional resources to critical and unstable patients. For example, in cases of hemodynamic instability that may require vasoactive or vasopressor medication or respiratory failure that might result in intubation and mechanical ventilation, CLEWICU’s AI notifications enable caregivers to make a timely intervention and ensure desired patient outcomes.

Using the platform’s standard interfaces, clients can also obtain admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) details of inpatients and their test results, flow sheet data, and medication data. Concurrently, the platform also identifies factors that trigger notifications for patients off their treatment course due to specific care exceptions. Additionally, it reports patients who share characteristics and demonstrates how using the platform has affected overall clinical outcomes for critically-ill individuals.

CLEW provides five primary views: unit, patient, and work list views, patients off best practices, and optional severity-adjusted outcomes prediction management. The unit view displays the hospital unit and bed hierarchy and offers population and alerting information. Meanwhile, the patient view provides all pertinent data to comprehend what happens with a patient. The work list view gives Virtual ICU clinicians a comprehensive view of all patient alerts across the system. Users can utilize the work list view to manage patients flagged for various reasons and efficiently oversee the work queue.

Our approach toward customers is to be responsive and nimble by quickly integrating data science into clinical support at the bedside without having to develop a completely new iteration of the Virtual ICU system

Through its workflow management feature, CLEW enables remote physicians to set up reminders or create tasks for other doctors to complete on their behalf, functioning as a work queue management system and communication tool. Simultaneously, the work list for best practices allows them to view all patients, not on the intended care trajectory, and take necessary action. Offering a user-friendly and streamlined interface, CLEW accomplishes in four or five screens what competitors need 15 to 30 screens to do by customizing the screen and layouts to suit client needs and making relevant data available with a single click.

Recently, CLEW assisted Penn State Health (PSH), who were previously receiving Tele-ICU services from a third-party vendor, in starting their own program. For this project, CLEW used a large portion of the client’s existing infrastructure, gathering data from their monitoring, life support, and electronic health record devices. CLEW launched PSH’s in-house Virtual ICU services within 12 weeks by effortlessly integrating with the audiovideo equipment and other solutions installed in their rooms. Currently, Penn State Health has three hospitals and 200 beds on the CLEW platform, with caregivers continually boasting about how the system allows them to markedly simplify the process of data acquisition from relevant EHRs.

Going beyond its value in boosting ICU operations, CLEW is entering emergency rooms and step-down units, where it helps caregivers make timely interventions by building new capabilities that broaden CLEWICU’suse with other high-acuity patients.