Alerting is a critical facet of patient care. Clinical staff of all walks and disciplines receive alerts for any number of values and events in order to respond more quickly to emergent situations. But not all alerts are created equal, and being able to distinguish between alert types is an important factor in fending off alert fatigue.

There are a few different ways we’ve begun to innovate around alerting, all based around our Inbound Alerting API: We’ve added the ability to customize sounds for different alert types so that they match the sound that would originate from a physical hardware device and are more easily recognizable by staff. We’ve also added the ability to include a launch point in the payload of an alert so that end-users can launch directly into apps from our partners that provide detailed patient-specific information.

The Inbound Alerting API is the most widely used out of our CURE Connect™ Integration Program. Customers have seen value from integrating MH-CURE as an alerting endpoint with everything ranging from nurse call and telemetry to paging and sepsis detection. Recently, we’ve been looking for ways to make this API even more robust, and after consulting with our customers and partners, Apple granted us permission to add critical alert entitlement as a setting within our platform.

What Does This Mean?

On iPhones, the critical alert entitlement is most commonly seen in emergency alerts, such as AMBER alerts or severe weather warnings. This setting overrides the phone’s display presets, so recipients will get notified even if their devices are set to mute or Do Not Disturb. The implications of this feature are significant—clinicians will not have to worry about turning off their ringers for fear of missing a critical alert or page regarding a patient’s health or safety.

How Can It Be Used?

One example of how critical alerts can be used that will resonate with many healthcare organizations is paging integrations. Rather than carrying multiple devices, providers and on-call clinicians will be able to rely on just one platform for all communications. This also reduces the chances of a staff member missing an important message because their phone was muted or because they’re off campus.

Other potential uses include:

How Can I Get This Feature?

The critical alerts update is available in our latest release, along with the new MH-CURE Desktop application. Reach out to our team here for more information on how we can start this process together.