'Hypercare' linked Mount Sinai Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Toronto with on-call pediatric specialists at SickKids through a secure messaging workflow. For nurse practitioners and physicians, the change replaces switchboard requests and callback waits with chats that can carry details and images while care continues at the bedside.
After onboarding and a data-sharing agreement, Mount Sinai NICU nurse practitioners can use SickKids' Hypercare instance directly, so the receiving specialist sees the consult topic before responding. Asynchronous messaging and secure photo sharing cut phone chasing and let clinicians keep moving through rounds, testing decisions and discharge planning.
Hypercare shows how shared access to a partner hospital's instance can turn cross-site consultation from a chain of phone calls into infrastructure, moving secure messaging from an internal convenience to a coordination layer that speeds weekend care planning and discharge decisions across separate hospitals.
Image Credit: Shutterstock/JHVEPhoto
What Makes This Trend Stand Out
- Cross-hospital Messaging
- Shared secure communication layers can reduce care delays by making specialist access portable across institutional boundaries.
- Asynchronous Clinical Consults
- Flexible chat-based workflows create room for faster decisions while clinicians continue bedside care, rounds, and discharge planning.
- Image-enabled Care Coordination
- Secure photo sharing within clinical conversations expands remote assessment capabilities for time-sensitive specialty input.
Sectors Adopting This
- Healthcare Technology
- Interoperable messaging platforms represent a growing infrastructure opportunity for hospitals coordinating distributed clinical teams.
- Hospital Administration
- Operational gains emerge when consult workflows shift from switchboards and callbacks to trackable digital coordination systems.
- Pediatric Specialty Care
- Remote access to neonatal and pediatric experts can reshape regional care delivery by extending specialist capacity beyond a single site.
