Background: Delirium, a highly morbid condition affecting significant numbers of hospitalized adults, is under-recognized due to challenges in monitoring patients’ waxing and waning symptoms. In addition, precipitating environmental factors such as light, sound, and sleep are difficult to observe. Computer vision cameras that can generate continuous observations of patients and their in-room care environment have […]

Background: Complex non-pharmacologic interventions containing multiple, or bundled, components can successfully prevent and treat hospital-acquired delirium in older adults. However consistent implementation, and the measurement of compliance, of these bundled interventions can be challenging to sustain in hospital settings especially in presence of COVID-19. Developing workflows with a smaller sub-set of components that are feasible […]

Background: Delirium, a highly morbid condition affecting significant numbers of hospitalized adults, is under-recognized due to challenges in monitoring patients’ waxing and waning symptoms. In addition, precipitating environmental factors such as light, sound, and sleep are difficult to observe. Computer vision cameras that can generate continuous observations of patients and their in-room care environment have […]

Background: Complex non-pharmacologic interventions containing multiple, or bundled, components can successfully prevent and treat hospital-acquired delirium in older adults. However consistent implementation, and the measurement of compliance, of these bundled interventions can be challenging to sustain in hospital settings especially in presence of COVID-19. Developing workflows with a smaller sub-set of components that are feasible […]

Background: Hospital-acquired delirium induced via disruptions of the sleep cycle contributes to increased mortality and morbidity in hospitalized patients (1,2). Surveys of hospitalized general internal medicine patients at our institution, a tertiary academic medical center, have found that sleep duration is decreased in the hospital, with inpatients sleeping on average 4-6 hours, and reporting worse […]

Case Presentation: A 67 year-old woman presented with six weeks of worsening disorientation. Her husband reported severe insomnia, abnormal behaviors, decreased short-term memory, and very labile mood. She had a history of well-controlled bipolar disorder on chronic lithium therapy. She had a forty pack-year smoking history. She was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and […]