The beeping monitors on sets of TV medical shows aren’t just props. They’re meant to look real, reliable and modern. That’s why producers of the American television shows “Nurse Jackie” and “Royal Pains” added EarlySense, the Israeli-made centralized bedside patient monitoring system, to the backdrops of the popular medical dramas.
“Practically every day we hear from clinicians that the EarlySense system helps them save lives and keep patients safe. One of our goals is to increase awareness of the clinical and economic benefits of our technology,” EarlySense CEO Avner Halperin tells ISRAEL21c.
“As part of that process, and as we grow towards becoming the standard of care in all hospitals, EarlySense is going prime time and making its systems unique contact-free technology available to producers of leading television shows.”
It’s not the first time Israeli medical breakthroughs have achieved on-air acclaim. In 2010, ReWalk, a robotic exoskeleton designed in Israel to help paraplegics walk and climb stairs alone, became the talk of talk shows when it was featured on “Glee.”
Without ever physically touching the patient, EarlySense measures heart rate, respiration rate, patient movement while in bed, and how often a patient enters and exits the hospital bed, by utilizing a sensor that is placed under the mattress.
The story lines of both prime-time TV shows give off the feeling that everything is under control and the patient is being watched and cared for by the monitoring systems seen on screen.
Though the EarlySense brand name has not been mentioned, the company believes that just by seeing it, viewers – and medical personnel — will assume it will be in hospitals in reality.
“Soon, patients, their families and clinical teams will not only feel more secure knowing the system is in place, as we know to be the case today, but they will also come to expect it,” says Halperin.
EarlySense tells ISRAEL21c that producers have asked for the monitoring system for next season’s episodes as well.
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