How the Philips Central Monitoring (CMU) safeguards patients and supports frontline teams
- By Philips
- July 31 2025
- 5 min read
The status quo for centralized telemetry often falls short. It can lead to delayed monitoring, conflated patient information, hampered communication and missed deterioration – all while the din of false or non-actionable alarms continues unabated. In response, the Philips Central Monitoring Unit (CMU) sheds old constraints to deliver dependable patient oversight and frontline support. A next-generation CMU, its end-to-end solution supports alarm management and communication, staff workflows, and patient safety and flow. A step-by-step patient journey demonstrates the features and benefits.
At-a-glance:
- Existing ways of centralized telemetry monitoring often fail to provide reliable patient safeguards and clinical support – despite the best efforts of the teams involved.
- In response, the Philips CMU integrates with existing information systems, supports alarm management and communications between teams, and frees nurses from the bedside and central station.
- Following the patient journey showcases the value the Philips CMU provides for patient oversight, clinical support and hospital operations.
In this scenario, the health system operates a Philips CMU shared by multiple hospitals. In addition to a team of monitor techs, the CMU has a lead tech for each shift and a manager. The health system has decided to accept the recommendations of the Philips Standards team for configuring its centralized telemetry, including its alarm parameters and settings.
As with all Philips CMUs, the PIC iX informatics platform lies at the heart, connecting CMU workstations with patient monitors and central stations across hospitals and capturing, storing, analyzing and sharing data. The health system also deploys Philips Event Notification for alarm communications and the Care Assist app for clinician smartphones.
Thanks to the flexible sectors afforded by PIC iX, the CMU maintains a max ratio of 48 patients per monitor tech. The monitor techs tap a suite of Philips clinical decision support tools, while the lead tech and CMU manager use the integrated Clinical Insights Manager analytics engine – specifically the Telemetry Insights Manager (TIM) and Alarm Insights Manager (AIM) applications.
Let’s get started.
Step 1: Admission and monitor application
- After examining the patient in the emergency department, a physician orders telemetry to observe heart rhythm, a request the CMU team quickly sees because of the integration of PIC iX with the EMR. (While not needed this time, the CMU manager can use TIM to identify patients who have a telemetry order but no monitoring or who have telemetry monitoring but no order.)
- The lead tech admits the patient and assigns a monitor, ideally using the financial identification number rather than the medical record number to avoid confusion. To pull in patient demographics, the lead tech chooses between manual or auto ADT. (The ability of PIC iX to connect with ADT systems ensures the right monitor goes on the right patient.)
- Inside the hospital, the patient receives the monitor and has electrodes placed. A nurse checks the patient’s demographics and validates the initial heart rhythm on the monitor.
Step 2: Wavestrip export
- EMR integration means the end of a long-standing but time-consuming practice: the printing, cutting, pasting and scanning of wavestrips. Instead, at admission the monitor tech digitally measures, annotates, saves and exports a wavestrip straight to the patient’s medical record.
- The monitor tech repeats this step at shift change and for any acute changes before then. (Wavestrips can be categorized as admit, acute change or routine for easier reference by clinicians.)
- At the hospital, a nurse is notified to review and validate the wavestrips in the EMR.
Step 3: Alarm customization
- While monitoring continues, a charge nurse uses AIM analytics to identify alarm management challenges and look for their root causes.
- To address the number of non-actionable alarms, the charge nurse has been mentoring the monitor techs about recommending appropriate alarm customizations.
- As with other cases, the monitor tech uses the Alarm Advisor CDS tool to identify customized alarm parameters and settings for the patient. The monitor tech passes suggestions to a registered nurse for approval and validation in the EMR.
Step 4: Filtering non-actionable alarms
- With the Philips CMU, the health system chooses to dispatch red alarms automatically, after a brief pause for its monitor techs to spot and cancel false positives. Inoperative (INOP) alarms for a low battery, a single lead off or a slipped SpO2 probe also go out automatically, to hospital staff with non-nursing roles.
- The remaining yellow alarms contain a mix of non-actionable changes and clinically significant warnings. With Philips tools and technology, the monitor techs filter out unnecessary alarms, reducing interruptions so frontline nurses can focus on intentional and meaningful bedside care.
- To decide whether alarms are meaningful, the monitor techs can turn to additional Philips CDS tools. Horizon Trends quickly indicates whether a parameter is going up, staying the same or going down. ST Map shows whether ST segments are changing and can signal heart attack risk.
- In this case, a yellow alarm arrives. Using the available information and tools, the monitor tech determines it’s non-actionable. The alarm gets closed on the screen.
Step 5: Dispatching meaningful alarms
- When the next yellow alarm arrives, the tech decides it’s critical and nurses need to see it.
- Since it has Event Notification, the health system can establish routes for alarm distribution, to control which clinicians receive which types of alarms. The health system can also determine escalation settings for unanswered alarms – how quickly those alarms automatically move on and who they go to next.
- Once the tech pushes out the alarm, the assigned nurse makes a decision. In busier moments, the nurse can manually escalate the alarm using the Care Assist app – or the escalation timer automatically sends it on.
- This time, the nurse accepts the alarm. Using Care Assist, the nurse views Philips unique “alarm snippet” – up to four waveforms and four numerics per patient – and watches streaming waveforms. The nurse gains greater context and can determine how quickly to head to the bedside.
- With Care Assist, the nurse can also silence the alarm, save and export a wavestrip, or start a noninvasive blood pressure or SpO2 measurement for further information. (NiBP would need to come from a separate, non-telemetry monitor.)
- Back in the CMU, the monitor tech tracks alarm status and escalation. The monitor tech confirms alarm receipt and sees who has responded and how, for further reassurance that alarms aren’t just going out blindly or getting lost.
Step 6: Discontinuing telemetry
- At 48 hours, the patient has not experienced any notable cardiac changes. Under health system guidelines, the patient is eligible to go off telemetry.
- In the past, identifying the patient for appropriate discontinuation would have required manual searching and sorting. Now, the TIM analytics tool automatically flags the patient as arrhythmia free for the lead tech and CMU manager.
- Working with a nurse, the monitor tech secures physician approval for safe discontinuation of telemetry.
- The patient is discharged – in this case with short-term, at-home monitoring to further safeguard health.
- Not only does the patient not need to stay at the hospital longer than necessary, but equipment and staffing become available for new admissions from the ED.
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Disclaimer
Results are specific to the institution where they were obtained and may not reflect the results achievable at other institutions. Results in other cases may vary.