Hoana Medical Inc., a Hawai'i-based medical technology company, said The Queen's Medical Center will equip 100 more beds with its LifeBed Patient Vigilance Systems, bringing to about 150 the number of beds using the monitoring system.

Hoana said Queen's will have the largest deployment of the LifeBed system of any private hospital. The system has been tested in 25 hospitals.

The Queen's contract is the latest in good news for Hoana, which has spent more than a decade developing the system that allows patients' vital signs to be monitored at all times without intrusive wires or devices being hooked up to their bodies.

The system uses sensors embedded in a mattress coverlet to monitor patients, detecting when their condition becomes unsafe or worsens. Hoana has promoted the LifeBed as being useful in general care areas of hospitals where patients aren't typically hooked up to monitors and can't be observed directly at all times.

Queen's, a 505-bed hospital that has no financial interest in LifeBed technology, has been supportive of the system. It has tested the LifeBed in two pilot projects and presented a nursing staff study of the technology at a national conference last year.

"We're excited about the LifeBed because it has improved our quality of care," said Cindy Kamikawa, Queen's chief nursing officer, in a statement. She said typically medical-surgical nurses care for four to five patients.

"The LifeBed operates like a surveillance system that provides another set of 'eyes' that monitor the patient's condition."

She said the system can detect patient changes because of medications, physiology or treatments early and alert medical staff to provide treatment earlier.

Hoana said the LifeBed has been used on more than 15,000 patients around the country for a total of more than 1.5 million patient hours.

The Queen's contract follows Hoana's obtaining $1.7 million in federal funding several weeks ago to test if its system improves the effectiveness of hospital rapid response teams.

Hoana CEO Patrick Sullivan said the company's experience already shows that finding patients in trouble early makes a difference in their outcomes.

"Using something as simple as the LifeBed to find patients in trouble on the general ward is clearly enhancing the effectiveness of rapid response teams nationwide," Sullivan said.

Hoana also has a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs contract to market and sell the system to more than 240 federal medical facilities and Department of Defense hospitals.