In a move that could redefine access to neonatal care, Arkansas Children’s Hospital has partnered with Caregility to deploy a specialized connected care cart for neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), enabling remote specialists to support fragile newborns from any location. The solution is part of Caregility’s broader strategy to embed telehealth into the patient care environment through scalable, smart room-ready technology.
The purpose-built NICU cart, developed collaboratively by Caregility and Arkansas Children’s, is designed to support a range of virtual use cases—from tele-resuscitation and tele-consultation to remote simulation training. It offers advanced features such as night vision camera capability, multiple simultaneous audio/video streams, and a manual camera lift that enables precise visual access at the isolette level—where every detail matters.
Bedside NICU clinicians at Arkansas Children’s Hospital conduct a remote specialist consultation for pediatric patient care
Extending Access to Critical Care Expertise
At the heart of this innovation is the need to bridge geographic gaps in access to neonatal subspecialists, especially for rural or understaffed hospitals. The NICU cart enables real-time connection between bedside teams and off-site neonatologists, maternal-fetal medicine experts, and other specialists, improving coordination and speed of care when time is most critical.
“We needed a solution to virtually support infants who are critically ill, and who often need immediate attention from remote neonatologists or subspecialists,” said Dr. Lowry Barnes, interim chief medical officer at Arkansas Children’s. “Caregility helped us bring that vision to life.”
Arkansas Children’s NICU, designated a Level IV facility, is one of the most advanced in the region and serves as a statewide hub for newborn critical care. The addition of a mobile, camera-enabled cart allows the hospital to scale its TeleNICU program more effectively across partner hospitals and transfer networks.
From Point Solutions to Platform Strategy
Unlike generic telehealth carts, the NICU solution is deeply integrated into Caregility’s Connected Care™ platform, which powers smart, virtual workflows across inpatient and outpatient environments. This means hospitals can move beyond isolated video consults to a broader model that includes ambient AI, secure documentation, alerting systems, and unified provider access—all from a single point of control.
According to Bin Guan, CTO of Caregility, “This NICU cart is another step forward in our journey to support high-acuity workflows with flexible telehealth infrastructure that helps hospitals scale virtual care safely and sustainably.”
The Caregility NICU cart was developed with a low-profile design and roll-in/roll-out mobility, allowing bedside placement without disrupting care delivery. The height-adjustable, manually operated camera system accommodates NICU-specific space and lighting constraints—something many off-the-shelf solutions fail to address.
Telehealth Designed for the Smallest Patients
Neonatal care is among the most sensitive and complex areas of medicine. The conditions requiring NICU intervention—such as respiratory distress, prematurity, or congenital anomalies—often call for immediate, coordinated response. In rural areas or community hospitals without 24/7 neonatal coverage, this can be a challenge.
Virtual NICU access can:
-
Reduce time-to-treatment for critical conditions
-
Prevent unnecessary patient transfers
-
Enable ongoing specialist input during recovery
-
Support caregiver training and decision-making
By delivering visual clarity and collaboration tools to remote specialists, the Caregility NICU cart enhances decision-making during life-critical moments. It also serves as a training platform, with tele-simulation capabilities that allow for remote teaching and team performance review.
Positioned for Broader Adoption
The NICU cart fits within Caregility’s broader vision of smart room transformation, in which telehealth capabilities are embedded directly into the care environment. The company has focused on designing clinical-grade devices and software that meet the specific needs of hospitals—not just general-use teleconferencing.
With many healthcare systems now formalizing their virtual care strategies post-pandemic, solutions like the Caregility NICU cart offer a scalable entry point for broader connected care initiatives.
Hospitals seeking to improve neonatal care coordination, reduce inequities in access to pediatric subspecialty care, or optimize high-risk transfer protocols may find this type of tailored, workflow-integrated solution critical to their roadmap.
As Barnes concluded, “Technology like this not only helps us extend the reach of our care team—it’s a vital tool in improving outcomes for our most vulnerable patients.”
Learn more about Caregility’s NICU telehealth solutions at caregility.com
– This original article was created with AI support.
