Using Emerging Technologies to Address Healthcare Staffing, Workplace Violence Issues
- By Matt Kjin
- April 22, 2025
The healthcare industry consistently adopts new technology to address challenges across all of its sectors. Many of the emerging technologies that are available today are being applied to optimize workflow. To enhance their operational efficiency, hospitals and other healthcare providers typically embrace emergent technologies to streamline tasks in patient care, administration, and, of course, security.
Underlying the need for better operational efficiency is a troubling reality: hospitals face significant challenges today, including a shortage of staff and behavior-related issues that can escalate into violence. For instance, healthcare workers are four times more likely to experience serious workplace violence, according to the American Hospital Association. A report published last year by National Nurses United reveals that eight in 10 nurses had experienced at least one type of workplace violence during the prior year.
The healthcare system faced staff shortages well before the pandemic and they continue to grow. Research from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing discovered that around 100,000 registered nurses (RNs) left the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, citing stress, burnout or retirement. Even more alarming is the fact that 800,000 additional RNs have expressed their intention to leave the workforce by 2027 for similar reasons.
Understaffing in the healthcare industry has been widely studied, and technology stands out as a good solution for certain workflows. Emerging tools seamlessly integrate into the workflows that make up this human-centered environment. These tools provide data that enhance efficiency and allow staff to focus more on patient care, including monitoring high-risk situations to keep them from escalating. Interestingly, while some industries focus on gathering business intelligence and gain operational efficiencies as a byproduct, that is reversed in the clinical world. Focusing on operational efficiencies in healthcare often produces business intelligence data as byproduct, which hospital administrators then can use to make data-driven decisions.
Almost every healthcare facility in the U.S. uses some form of video. The applications for it include security and safety, remote patient monitoring, virtual nursing, administrative tasks, and even monitoring situations such as occupancy levels and suspected medication diversion.
There are clear guidelines associated with where and how healthcare organizations can implement video technology, so that they meet the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The American Hospital Association explains what to consider from a compliance perspective. According to a January 2025 article in The HIPAA Journal, since Protected Health Information (PHI) cannot be separated from other data recorded by surveillance cameras, all footage (when recordings are used) must be secured in compliance with the safeguards outlined in the HIPAA Security Rule.
Wearable Cameras
One form of video—wearable cameras—is becoming a sought-after emerging technology to act as a behavioral modifier or record escalating behavior. These devices also are ideal for documentation in general.
The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) Foundation offers a comprehensive overview of the regulatory and legal considerations, titled “Body-Worn Cameras in Healthcare.” This guide is like a decoder ring for a hospital looking to implement a wearable technology.
Wearable cameras are typically used by security officers in a hospital. But they are equally as effective for nurses in home-care settings, because these professionals are completely on their own and don’t have the benefit of an installed base of network cameras around them the way a hospital has. Body-worn cameras work both ways, because they create a culture of accountability for all parties.
The goal of video surveillance in general — wearables especially — is to create a culture of accountability and transparency. This goal correlates with the American Nurses Association’s zero-tolerance policy against workplace violence. Wearables have the ability to complement de-escalation methods well due to the transparent nature of the technology. Success of a wearables program in a healthcare setting is embracing the balance of people, process and technology.
In-Room Cameras
One of the most interesting examples of technology aiding workflow optimization and surmounting staffing shortages is in the virtual nursing space. One form of virtual nursing is remote patient monitoring, also called “tele-sitting.” Another is for administrative purposes, using distributed communication in a patient’s room.
With remote patient monitoring, trained staff in a central location use clinical monitoring technology to observe patient activity in live-view. Very rarely — almost never — is the video or any associated audio recorded. A common example of this technology is monitoring patients who are deemed a fall risk. Another is monitoring patients who have behavioral health issues, such as those who exhibit a potential for self-harm.
Typically, in this scenario, there is a 12-to-one ratio of patients to care technician. The setup involves one-way video and two-way audio so the care technician can converse with patients to redirect them back to their bed or chair if necessary; technicians also can request bedside assistance.
Patient falls, which are the No. 1 cause of injury in a hospital, are not only expensive but they significantly degrade the patient experience when they happen. Some hospitals have reduced the incidence of falls by 80 percent after implementing live-view monitoring technologies.
As cameras became common in patient areas, clinical organizations expanded their use beyond remote patient monitoring. One key application is streamlining admissions and discharge processes, enabling healthcare teams — perhaps multiple nurses, an anesthesiologist, and a surgeon — to communicate effectively. This can enhance efficiency, save time, free up beds faster, and accelerate the patient’s stay.
Specific technologies contribute to this process and make it an immersive experience — for example, two-way video-based workflows. Pan-tilt-zoom cameras allow clinicians to read wrist bands and medication labels or monitor fluid drips. Typically, cameras operate in full resolution at 30 frames per second, with compression technology managing throughput.
Interoperable systems using the required privacy guardrails is another tool for improving workflow efficiency. As an example, the live video feed from a virtual nursing camera of a patient whose behavior is escalating could be diverted to the security department as an alert for possible de-escalation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the technologies being used — analytics can blur certain features — in the trend towards interoperable systems.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is already a critical tool of modern medicine, and now it is becoming well-adopted at hospitals and often woven into the general workflow. For example, GPTs and similar technology helps with auto-charting, so healthcare professionals can spend less time writing and more time caring for patients. It pulls data fields from the medical record of a patient to partially populate a probable charting message.
In remote patient monitoring, AI is assisting care technicians by alerting to behaviors such as a patient’s leg going over the side of the bed or the lowering of a bed rail. Plotting a virtual box around the bed sets up for an alert when that “patient envelope” is broken. Getting alerts in real time is the gold standard in AI workflow.
AI also can be used in a more traditional security sense, perhaps generating an alarm based on a perceived behavior of an individual such as lingering in a spot they shouldn’t be or speaking aggressively. The technology can identify an individual who is registered on a watch list, so security can address the situation proactively.
Workflow optimization doesn’t necessarily have to incorporate an AI model. Improving efficiency could just as easily result from using traditional technologies such as lighting, signage, duress alarms, and two-way audio-video intercoms, as in a system installed at hospital entry points to comply with Laura’s Law.
When adopting emerging technologies such as AI, audio, and video to optimize workflows, healthcare organizations should prioritize open architecture and non-proprietary solutions with functional testing in their clinical environment. These enable interoperability across a healthcare site’s domains of safety, patient care, and operations, and offer high value to the organization.