Remote monitoring contributes to preventing overwork-related events in health workers on the COVID-19 frontlines

Abstract

Fighting on the frontlines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, health workers are at high risk of virus infection and overwork-related sudden death and disorders including cardiovascular diseases and stress. When we noted the increase of overwork-related sudden deaths in physicians and nurses in the first 2 weeks after lockdown of Wuhan, we organized the ‘Touching Your Heart’ program by remote monitoring, aiming to protect health workers from overwork-related disorders through integrated volunteer work by physicians and medical engineering researchers from Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, and Tiangong University. By remotely monitoring the health conditions of the medical aid team working at Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital, the program successfully helped in avoiding severe overwork-related events. The results from our program should be used to remind frontline health workers around the world to take precautions against overworked-related severe events, and show that precision monitoring is effective in improving work efficiency and maintaining a sustainable workforce during emergency situations like a pandemic.