The Hospital Room of the Future: Better Care with Fewer Staff

Virtual care isn’t just for telehealth visits anymore—it’s becoming a critical part of inpatient care. Caregility is embedding virtual support directly into hospital rooms, helping to improve patient monitoring and give overworked nurses some much-needed relief.

Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with two senior leaders from Caregility to find out more. Mike Brandofino, President & COO and Susan Krisiniak, Chief Nursing Officer at Caregility joined us on-camera at HIMSS25 in Las Vegas.

Key Takeaways

1. Virtual nurses save time. Caregility’s research shows that virtual nursing can save up to 30 minutes per admission and an hour on discharges. Overall, virtual care reduces staffing costs, eases burnout, and helps hospitals retain experienced nurses.
2. It’s about support, not replacement. Virtual care helps overworked bedside nurses by handling routine tasks and monitoring, not by replacing them.
3. The hospital room of the future is smarter. AI-driven monitoring and real-time alerts ensure nurses focus on the patients who need them most.

Addressing Staffing Challenges with Virtual Care at the Bedside

At first glance, virtual care in an inpatient setting seems counter-intuitive, but when you consider the benefits to patients and clinical staff (especially nurses) it starts to make tremendous sense. Virtual care at the bedside means patients have quick access to nursing staff and nursing staff on the floor are less stressed knowing that there is a trained nurse helping to monitor their patients remotely.

“Virtual nursing is a huge opportunity right now,” said Brandofino. “You just don’t have enough nurses, so having the ability to do virtual care in every room makes a difference.”

“We’ve done research that shows virtual support can save up to 30 minutes per admission and an hour on discharges,” said Krisiniak. That time adds up to significant savings. It also reduces the strain on staff and improves care coordination.

This isn’t about replacing nurses, it’s about reducing their workload. Virtual nurses can assist with admissions, conduct discharge interviews, and even monitor high-risk patients without needing to be physically present.

“We’re not taking the nurse out of the equation—we’re giving them the tools to do their jobs better,” added Krisiniak.

Hospital Room of the Future

Caregility is already working to realize their vision of the “hospital room of the future.” Built on the Caregility Cloud Virtual Care Platform it will feature:

• Responsible AI solutions for augmented observation and vitals monitoring
• AI-ready, dual-camera telehealth edge devices for concurrent workflow support
• Clinical applications for one-to-one and one-to-many virtual bedside engagement
• Integrations with EHRs, nurse call systems, interactive patient consoles, digital bedside devices, and more
• New 5G connectivity options for rural and mobile engagement

“It’s all about gathering data from the room and presenting it in a way that allows nurses to focus on the patients who need them most,” Brandofino explained.

With all these capabilities in the future, healthcare providers will be able to offer enhanced patient safety, improved outcomes, and better experiences – all while reducing the workload and strain on staff.

Patients, Clinicians, and Providers Win

Caregility’s vision for virtual care isn’t just about adding more screens to hospital rooms—it’s about tackling one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today: nurse burnout and staffing shortages. By enabling remote patient monitoring and virtual rounding, their platform helps clinical teams do more with less, ensuring that patients still receive attentive, high-quality care even when staff resources are stretched thin.

“We’re not trying to replace bedside care—we’re giving nurses and doctors more tools to be where they need to be, when they need to be there,” said Krisiniak.

As hospitals continue to face staffing pressures, solutions like Caregility’s virtual care model could play a crucial role in maintaining both patient safety, clinician well-being, and provider success.

Learn more about Caregility at https://caregility.com/

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