BEAMS at Home is an acoustic bedside equipment alarm monitoring system, originally developed with and for Sheffield Children’s Hospital to help keep patients safe by ensuring that staff are fully aware of all bedside alarms and which alarms are a priority, even if they can’t be heard behind a closed door.
The multi-award-winning BEAMS system has now been adapted for home use. Carers looking after children and adults who are terminally ill, or require 24-hour monitoring at home, can now rely on BEAMS to alert them only when a piece of critical lifesaving medical equipment alarms unexpectantly.
Carers constantly have to listen out for machinery alarming, often leading to them staying with the patient for long periods of time. With BEAMS installed carers can now resume some normality to their daily life, and only be alerted if there is an issue wherever they are in the house or garden, day or night.
- Improves patient and carer experience, reducing anxiety and impact on sleep
- Ensures prompt responses to critical alarms reducing risks to the patient
- Improves response times and greatly reduces the number of alarms going unanswered
- Easy installation with minimum disruption
How does it work?
The BEAMS acoustic monitoring system comprises of a wall mounted monitor, a speaker located centrally in the house and a separate Wi-Fi unit with its own modem. Each wall mounted device constantly listens for specific alarm signals from the critical equipment and only alerts the carer if there is an issue.
Case study
Debbie Mace from Worksop has BEAMS installed at her home and is now responding to critical life- saving alarms for her two terminally ill children on average within 2.2 minutes during the day. The reassurance BEAMS gives Debbie and her partner now means they have quality time with her other children, feels less tired, generally more relaxed and calmer, and would recommend the system to other carers.
Kia and Nial, two of Debbie and Andy’s children are 7 and 8 years old respectively and both suffer from untreatable Mitochondrial disease. Both children are fed nutrients and medication from various 24-hour infusion pumps which require around the clock monitoring.
Debbie Mace explains how they came across this new alarm monitoring system.
“We heard about BEAMS (Bedside Equipment Alarm Monitoring System) when both the children were being monitored by the system in Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Once the children were back at our adapted home, we were constantly listening out for medical devices alarming. One person had to stay with them all the time. No nurses would come out to us as the machinery was too complicated."
“The hospital kindly put us in touch with Tutum Medical to see if they could adapt the hospital system for us at home,” continued Debbie, “It took two years to adapt for our home, but well worth the wait, we feel more relaxed and calmer and can spend quality time with the other children, we get more sleep and feel less tired. We are very grateful and thankful that such a small monitoring device is making such a big difference, we feel reassured and would recommend it to others in a similar situation.”
In the first instance please contact the team at Tutum Medical Ltd who will advise you on various options. Please call 01246 819100 or email
info@tutummedical.comThe MACE family for example received funds through the CCG for the BEAMS system. The children have a continuing care package which is reviewed annually and taken to panel to see if their medical condition requires extra support that is not provided by the NHS. This allows the children to have extra support in areas and purchase medical equipment that is not funded by the NHS, with evidence that would support/help the children in daily life.
