AI-POWERED PATIENT MONITORING King’s experience as a patient at Westshore revealed critical gaps in the hospital’s technological infrastructure. During his prostate surgery recovery, he watched nurses manually record vital signs every hour, a practice that belongs in the past, not in a premier Caribbean hospital. “I realized that the patient monitors were low level. They had to come in and write down blood pressure, literally come in and write down everything every hour,” King recalls.“But you’ve got patient monitoring systems that keep track of that. So you just download a file.” His solution involves implementing centralized monitoring systems from General Electric and Mindray that incorporate artificial intelligence modules.These systems represent a significant leap forward, particularly given that only 18.7 percent of US hospitals had adopted any form of AI by 2022, placing Westshore at the forefront of regional innovation. “GE and Mindray are using AI modules to be predictive. It will be able to look at many different variables and see them change where a human just can’t compute that,” King explains.“It can predict you are going to have a crash, not wait till it is crashing. That sort of early warning software embedded stuff excited me.” The financial model for this technology highlights King’s innovative approach. Rather than large capital expenditures, he’s negotiating subscription-based partnerships that ensure continuous upgrades. “As GE’s equipment advances, we advance. After three years, they changed the equipment. We’re still paying them a monthly fee,” he says. “That’s a different partnership model with GE that I’m trying to achieve. In Trinidad, that is not the normal model.” PERSONAL EXPERIENCE DRIVES PROFESSIONAL INNOVATION King’s push for technological advancement gained personal urgency following his 2024 prostate cancer diagnosis. The experience exposed him to both the limitations of traditional invasive surgery 48 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 12, ISSUE 06
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI5MjAx