Two weeks ago, Methodist Women's Hospital in Omaha, Neb., became the first and only system in the region to begin using the HeRo System in its neonatal intensive care unit to monitor heart rates and reduce mortality, according to a KETV report.
"What the HeRo System does is it takes the heart rate that we normally analyze on all babies…and it analyzes it a little more specifically, looking for the absence of normal heart rate variability," Brady Kerr, MD, told KETV.
The variabilities can help clinicians discover infections in the bloodstream or intestines of their tiny patients. The system processes the variabilities and then generates a score to help the Methodist Women's clinicians decide if they need to keep a close eye on specific babies or perform physician exams or laboratory tests to detect potential issues.
"If [the system is] one more thing that helps us, it's one more thing that helps [the patients]," said Leslie Yelick, RN, an NICU nurse of roughly 18 years, told the local news station.
According to Dr. Kerr, the system has been shown to reduce mortality rate by 20 percent.
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