To provide around the clock care to ICU patients being treated at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, the health system has partnered with two companies as it launches a pilot telemedicine program.

Macquarie University’s MQ Health in Sydney will use Philips’ technology to provide Emory with remote intensive care unit (eICU) care, which lets remote critical care specialists monitor patients. The initiative is aimed to let remote physicians in Sydney monitor patients at Emory while it is nighttime in Atlanta and daytime in Sydney. Emory hopes the technology helps decrease the risk of complications and shortens patients’ hospital stay, according to a statement from Emory to Clinical Innovation + Technology.

“Thanks to our eICU program we can continuously monitor Atlanta-based patients from MQ Health in Sydney and support the bedside team by recognizing adverse physiology, making critical diagnoses and intervening before those issues become significant problems,” said Timothy Buchman, MD, founding director of the Emory Critical Care Center and the chief of critical care service at Emory, in a statement. “In Australia, these types of technologies also have far-reaching potential to support care of rural and remote patients. Currently the optimal medical treatment there, in a stressful setting such as the ICU, can be thousands of miles away. The introduction of electronically-delivered specialist care has the potential to standardize the quality of care between the hospital and the countryside.”

In the future, Emory will expand the initiative’s intramural and outreach coverage, and possibly extend the international options for Emory clinicians who work in the eICU.

“The notion of a global eICU network is an interesting one,” Buchman said. “I am having some ‘what if’ conversations with colleagues on what it would take to put critical care professionals shoulder to shoulder around the world, local and ‘visiting expatriates,’ so that everyone’s home night-time care could be delivered from somewhere that is daylight.”