Montgomery County, PA, has teamed up with Real Time Medical Systems to provide 24/7 electronic Infectious Disease Surveillance of nursing facilities in the county, who have volunteered to share their data. The cloud-based software pulls data from the electronic health records (EHRs), identifying potential infectious disease "hotspots."

The system detects infectious disease warning signs, looking for changes in temperature, respiratory rate, cough, diagnosis, and shortness of breath. "By having automated, early access to all of today's medical information we hope to be able to identify outbreaks days earlier," says Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, Chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.

Real Time Medical Systems already works with over 1000 nursing centers nationwide. The software ensures patient data is protected, providing only facility-level data to the county. Real Time's system will not only deliver raw data, it will pair up various pieces of data from the EHRs to provide interventional analytics, in order to identify nursing facilities with potential problems early. This is the cutting edge of modern surveillance in nursing facility technology.

"By identifying a problem within a facility early, we can focus limited resources and equipment and we hope save lives of patients and staff," states Dr. Arkoosh. Montgomery County is the third largest county within the state of Pennsylvania and the first in the state to obtain this data access.

Real Time already provides services to sixty Pennsylvania nursing centers, seven of which are in Montgomery County. "We are happy to be helping Montgomery County," says Dr. Scott Rifkin, Executive Chairman of Real Time. "We strongly believe that this program will not only save the lives of both patients and staff today but will be beneficial in years to come."