The United Nations’ World Health Organization projects a shortfall of approximately 11 million health workers by 2030. As this global workforce gap widens, it’s getting harder to deliver high‑quality hospital care.

One visible consequence of this understaffing is in the practice of monitoring patients’ vital signs using traditional approaches that still rely on time-consuming, inefficient manual checks.

Traditional manual monitoring, typically done every four to six hours, leaves patients unmonitored for up to 96% of the time.Because these checks are intermittent and person-dependent, mistakes and omissions can easily occur. Spot checks of key vitals, like breathing rate, are often inaccurate or missed, which increases the risk that deterioration goes unnoticed, potentially delaying timely treatment and compromising patient safety and recovery.

Shift to Technology

The growing demand for technology-driven solutions is clear. Hospitals need ways to simplify their workflows, keep patients safe, and support health care workers. Specialized medical wearables have emerged as a transformative answer, offering continuous monitoring and data analytics that address many of the shortcomings of conventional approaches.

“Health care today extends beyond the physical walls of the hospital to include care delivered in the patient’s home and community—the transmural dimension,” says Peter Dierickx, Chief Technology Officer of AZ Maria Middelares, a hospital in Ghent, Belgium. “It requires an integrated model that combines the physical and digital hospital, enabling the delivery of high-tech care outside the hospital environment.”

The integration of predictive analytics into many wearable platforms is pivotal for hospital care. By accessing and harnessing real-time data, clinicians can respond to issues in real time and anticipate potential complications before they occur. This means teams can intervene earlier, mitigating risks, which may ultimately improve patient trajectories.

The ability to identify subtle trends and patterns by incorporating multi-sourced physiologic parameters and patient-specific data through continuous monitoring facilitates more personalized care and strengthens clinical decision making. For clinicians, instant access to a patient’s vital signs, such as heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, electrocardiogram (ECG), and oxygen saturation level, enables earlier detection of clinical anomalies that signal a worsening of health. This proactive approach encourages patient safety and fosters a culture of timely intervention, potentially reducing complications and supporting better outcomes.

For patients, continuous monitoring in the hospital during a qualitative study supported reassurance and a sense of security from knowing that in case of abnormalities, nurses could respond immediately. For health care teams, the shift from periodic spot checks to real-time data with specialized wearable technology means spending less time on routine observations and more on attending to patients. The result can be a more efficient workflow.

Transforming Hospital Pathways

Wearable technology-enabled continuous monitoring may be vital in the postsurgical setting. Surgery carries inherent risks of complications and death; more than 4 million people a year die within a month of surgery. In adults undergoing noncardiac surgery, 29.4% of post-surgery deaths occur after patients have left the hospital, a recent National Institutes of Health study found, and most occur within the first 30 days after the procedure.

Improving post-surgical care through monitoring can significantly reduce in-hospital mortality or ICU transfer rates, and the benefits of wearable technologies extend to home care as well. As health care providers increasingly look to optimize patient pathways, wearables offer a seamless transition from inpatient care to recovery at home. Continuous monitoring during this critical period gives clinicians ongoing insights, supporting proactive management and timely follow-up.

Future-Ready Health Care

Wearable technology is rapidly gaining traction in health care settings, with clear and measurable benefits for patient care and hospital efficiency. These devices’ seamless integration with hospital IT systems ensures unobstructed data flows, facilitating improved coordination across multidisciplinary teams. This makes the utility of wearables greater than ever before, supporting clinicians and patients alike.

Medical professionals and their patients can now get comprehensive, continuous real-time monitoring of multiple key vital signs, such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, ECG, and oxygen saturation level (SpO₂), with a multi-parameter medical-grade wearable device. Getting immediate information about patient status in all settings empowers clinicians with predictive analytics.

At AZ Maria Middelares, one of the first Belgian health care organizations to offer home monitoring after heart surgery, clinicians adopting real-time monitoring intervened early in 33% of patient cases.

“One of the most significant advantages is the ability to screen for atrial fibrillation at an early stage while the patient is already at home. In such cases, patients can be instructed to record a short electrocardiogram,” says Dr. Koen Cathenis, Head of Cardiac Surgery at AZ Maria Middelares. “Based on this data, in my experience, we have promptly adjusted medication, either directly or via the general practitioner, which allowed us to intervene quickly and effectively.”

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Now is the time to champion digital adoption and make wearable technology a cornerstone of resilient, future-ready care systems. The shift toward integrated, data-driven patient monitoring may both address current challenges and define the next era of health care innovation. Learn how the Corsano™* multi-parameter wearable is being adopted to support hospital care across Europe.

* Third-party brands are trademarks of their respective owners. All other brands are trademarks of a Medtronic company.

The Corsano™* multi-parameter wearable is manufactured by Corsano Health B.V. and distributed by Medtronic.

The Corsano™* multi-parameter wearable is not intended for use in high-acuity environments.

Corsano™* multi-parameter wearable should not be used as the sole basis for diagnosis or therapy and is intended only as an adjunct in patient assessment.