Why Hero
Current monitoring systems lack the ability to provide early warnings of patient distress. This is what makes HeRO different.
Cytokines are the mediators of the inflammatory response which have effects throughout the body. One of those effects is characteristic abnormal heart rate patterns that occur during the early stage of infection. HeRO is able to identify these patterns by analyzing data that is already being collected by the physiological monitor and renders a score (i.e. the HeRO score) every hour that shows the risk of infection in the next 24 hours.
Delays in antibiotic administration can increase mortality and morbidity. If antibiotics can be started earlier, the infection can be treated before it goes systematic and causes all sorts of problems.
How does HeRO work
HeRO is monitoring technology that responds to neonatal distress caused by conditions such as sepsis. HeRO is a non-invasive tool to help anticipate rapid declines in neonates. It uses the data that is already being collected by the existing physiological monitor – meaning there are no additional leads needed and there is no extra patient contact required.
A rising HeRO score often precedes clinical signs and symptoms by several hours to days. In many cases, the rise of the HeRO score will occur 4 to 48 hours prior to the presentation of clinical symptoms. Significant clinical events are likely to be detected earlier as a result of the rising HeRO score. Proven in a 3000 patient randomized controlled trial, use of the HeRO score led to a 22% mortality reduction in very low birthweight infants.
HeRO is used to:
- Continuously acquire an ECG signal or heart rate data from an existing physiological monitor;
- Identify and determine the length of time between individual heart beats (the R-R Interval);
- Calculate a set of measures from these R-R Intervals to characterize the heart rate pattern;
- Compute an “index” based on the degree of decelerations and reduced baseline variability in these patterns;
- Calculate the HeRO Score, which expresses the index as a fold-increase risk of sepsis relative to the overall NICU population, and;
- Provide this information to clinicians in a timely and intuitive fashion.
Which HeRO systems are available
There are three variants of the HeRO system:
1. HeRO Symphony – the flagship solution;
2. HeRO Solo/Duet – the single/double solution;
3. HeRO ES – the integrated solution.
Details of each solution are found on their respective product page.
Contact us for more information.
For your reference we have a literature list available at: HeRo Score