Usefulness of a Standard Operating Procedure in Remote Monitoring Management

Abstract

The remote monitoring（RM）-related workload of clinical engineers is increasing with the rise in RM management of patients with cardiac implantable electrophysiological devices. As a result the workload related to RM needs to be reduced safely and efficiently. In addition, because several clinical engineers are involved in RM-related work, a standard operating procedure（SOP）is required to perform identical work. We started RM management using an SOP in 2016. After that, we investigated workload changes between 1 year before（August 2015 to July 2016）and 1 year after（August 2016 to July 2017）SOP introduction. Along with an increase in patients with RM management（109–136 ; increase rate, 1.25 times）, the total number of alerts also increased（2,002–2,367 per year ; 1.18 times）. However, the number of alerts decreased relatively compared the increase in the number of patients. Alerts related to atrial fibrillation decreased from 244 to 60 per year. The RM-related workload of clinical engineers can be safely and efficiently reduced using the SOP approach.