Press Release on APERUM

Kansas City, Missouri (April 18, 2011) -- Sphere3™ Releases Aperum™ targeting patient satisfaction Indicares™ within U.S. Hospitals. Sphere3™ is the first to reach the market in an emerging category of software targeting patient satisfaction and safety during a hospital stay. Since it’s inception in 2009, Sphere3™ has focused on nursing activities that indicate quality of care. Aperum™ uses data found within standard transactions of the hospital’s patient communication platform to provide performance and risk indications.




The Company’s proprietary algorithms dissect the data path and normalize basic elements for analysis related to patient requests and resulting caregiver responses. The resulting Indicares™ within Aperum™ reveal actual caregiver performance against hospital expectations for performance based on patient needs by category. Further analysis within Aperum™ reveals behavioral patterns for patients and peak times for certain patient needs, offering new insights in caregiving and staffing models.



“We are very excited about how Aperum™ can advance the suite of clinical management tools within the hospital,” says Kourtney Govro, Founder and CEO of Sphere3™. “Most CNOs and Directors of Nursing manage staffing and clinical care decisions based on subjective data. Few have access to the necessary technical expertise to evaluate the real and changing patterns of patient needs and caregiver response.”



Hospitals invest heavily in the nurse call systems and clinical alarms found in a patient’s room. These devices are the primary method in which patients can request assistance from hospital staff. In some cases, the systems have advanced to “sense” patient needs based on physiological movement or biometrics and automatically generate a request from the room. Although very technical and advanced in their design, the platform makers are more about devices and less about offering critical management information. Yet, the systems are rich in data and capable of revealing behavioral patterns in patient care.



Govro offers, “Our progress was initially challenged by the lack of understanding for the information available from resident systems. We are bridging the knowledge gap within the hospital by creating a common language for this data and the behavioral patterns revealed within it.”



Govro believes a number of drivers will aggressively move hospitals to using this new category of software. For example, Lean Principles for staffing target more flexible movement of staff as needed throughout the hospital without compromising the level and quality of care. Objective measures of patient needs, priority, wait times and associated risks should assist caregivers and managers in assigning the right staff at the right time to a floor.



“Patient safety is at the heart of this balance,” Govro says. “Patients are in the hospital because of acute needs. The simple act of getting out of a bed unsupervised creates the risk of a fall, which is a costly event for hospitals.”



Govro explains patient falls are closely measured by hospitals. Because the event is considered avoidable, Medicare and insurance companies deny the associated costs of care linked to the fall, including additional days of stay in the hospital. According to a study completed by the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO with Barnes Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, MO in 2004, the typical patient fall occurred during activities unassisted by staff (79%) in the patient room (85%)1.



The makers of patient communication platforms place continue to investment heavily in more accurately categorizing and routing the patient needs to caregivers. Sphere3™ has filled the information void by developing the necessary enterprise level management software to manage the aggregate of needs with caregiver availability.



“Although Version 1.0 is a retrospective review of the data,” Govro says, “future versions will move data to real-time and allow for immediate care management decisions.”



1 Characteristics and Circumstances of Falls in a Hospital Setting: A Prospective Analysis. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1492485/)