To read: ~ 6 minutes
Two people are standing on the edge of a riverbank. They see a struggling swimmer floating past, calling for help. They pull the swimmer to safety, but as soon as they do: another floats by. Then another, and another. Finally, one of the original pair goes running up the riverbank.
“Hey!” Their friend shouts after, “Where are you going?”
The runner calls over their shoulder, “I’m going to find out what’s making all these people fall in the river!”
Poor healthcare tech implementation can be a lot like this…
The drowning swimmers: the alarm fatigue that has taken over your clinical staff.
The root cause: an alarm management system that fails to address the clinical workflows that impact nearly everything downstream.
The cost of this disconnect is staggering. Recent research has shown a typical patient on telemetry in a Med Surg unit can generate more than 90 alarms per day, most of which do not require action. It’s a wall of sound, and it’s eating away at the sanity of your staff and safety of your patients.
As a clinical or technical leader in healthcare, you understand the frustration when technology implementations fail to deliver their promised value. These almost-solutions churn the water, without impacting root causes. Despite significant investments in alarm management and clinical communication systems, many organizations continue to struggle with alarm fatigue, poor adoption, and limited return on investment.
But the problem isn’t in the technology itself—it’s in how we implement it.
The False Promise of Technology-Led Solutions
According to Shane Wilson, Productization Specialist at Connexall, most healthcare organizations make a similar series of mistakes when implementing alarm management systems. Too often they:
- Make Technology King. Hospital leaders make broad decisions about what technology to deploy in their institution. At the level of decision-making, they sometimes forget to consider the needs of IT and clinical teams, equally. It can be a bit of tightrope: balancing the harmony of the overall tech stack (integration and coherence) with the functionality of those technologies (functionality and ease) for clinicians. If either side gets forgotten, things can quickly go awry.
- Think One-Size-Fits All. Clinicians understand that you can’t just apply a workflow in one location to another and expect good results. There are benefits to standardization, but take the time to review and consider those standards first. Allow for unit nuances like staffing patterns, patient populations and the layout of the physical setting to influence configurations. Then, identify barriers to adopting the standard before applying it hospital-wide.
Wait to Include Key Players. Clinical leaders are accountable for the clinical adoption of technology, so bring them in as thought-leaders and champions as early as possible. Too many organizations roll out new systems without this critical input, “and then, three weeks later there’s a riot,” quips Wilson, “because nurses don’t want to use it.”
“Customers may purchase Connexall thinking they can just deploy it ‘out of the box,’” says Wilson, “and it will solve all their problems. But that isn’t the case.” A lot of work still needs to be done.
When an alarm management system is deployed without input from clinical teams, the default (from an abundance of caution/risk aversion) is to “send too many alarms,” and often with a very aggressive (and short) escalation path. So instead of reducing noise in the hospital, it can be doubled or even tripled.
This overabundance of alerts increases alarm fatigue, forces clinical staff to create workarounds, and worst of all: fails to improve patient safety.
A Better Way: Clinical First Technology Implementation
The information you need to make smart implementation decisions doesn’t exist within the technical specifications or a product manual. It exists on the hospital floor, and in the experience of the people who work there.
It’s why a huge part of the Connexall Clinical Elevate program includes direct, on-site observation at every client hospital.
As Wilson says: “The clinician should have a say in every circumstance where it touches their clinical workflow and patient safety. The tech folks are there to provide the tools.” Ideally the process is a collaborative one, with both perspectives at the table.
Through this on-site engagement—combined with Connexall’s 30+ years of implementation experience—we’ve developed a set of best practices for those forward-thinking leaders looking to design a clinical-first implementation.
The C.L.I.N.I.C.A.L. Approach: Foundations for Successful Healthcare Technology Implementation
The following C.L.I.N.I.C.A.L. Approach provides a structured, evidence-based approach to implementing clinical technology solutions that deliver lasting value. This methodology has helped organizations achieve remarkable results, including up to 43% reduction in alarm volumes while improving response to critical alerts.
Whether you’re planning a new implementation or struggling with an existing one, these strategies will help you bridge the technical-clinical divide and create sustainable value from your technology investments.
C.L.I.N.I.C.A.L. Approach for Clinical-First Technology Implementation
Clinical
Healthcare technology implementations must prioritize clinical excellence and patient-centered care above all else. The technology should enhance, not disrupt, the delivery of high-quality care and patient outcomes.
Hospitals should evaluate every workflow decision through the lens of its impact on clinicians and the patients they care for.
Clinical Checklist:
✅ Prioritize patient safety alongside technical functionality
✅ Prepare to design workflows around real clinical environments
✅ Plan to measure success through clinical outcomes
Leadership
Technology implementations that affect clinical workflows must be led by the clinical leaders who have the authority to drive change and spearhead adoption. Their expertise in navigating patient alerts “on the ground” will make a decisive difference in your implementation design.
Wilson strongly encourages the formation of an ongoing Alarm Management Committee, with the support of our Connexall Clinical Elevate program, as the most effective means for managing clinical alarms and workflows moving forward.
Leadership Checklist:
✅Establish clinical leadership authority
✅Engage nursing leaders with power to influence
✅Ensure clinicians have the final say in workflow decisions
Inclusion
When you start planning a new technological system with IT, include clinical leaders in the technology conversation as early as possible. They will be especially helpful in alarm management decisions.
Clinical leaders may want to see a small pilot before rolling out a new tech system across all care units, especially for alarm management. Connexall client hospitals, such as Stanford and Avera, have both benefited from a phased rollout of new alarm notifications. They started by sending only a few critical alarms and key alerts, and found that once clinicians got acquainted with the system, they were quick to request additional alarms and alerts. The wider rollout was therefore much easier.
Inclusion Checklist:
✅ Begin with recommendations from clinical teams
✅ Engage IT to design a system that works within the existing hospital workflows
✅ Expand based on clinical request and evidence-based feedback
Network
Clinical leaders need ongoing input from frontline staff and vendor partners to understand how technology and workflows are actually performing at the bedside. Without these information networks, leaders often make decisions based on incomplete data or assumptions that don’t reflect the reality of the units.
Successful hospitals build regular feedback mechanisms that connect a network of multiple information sources. This means conducting routine staff surveys about workflow challenges, analyzing patient safety, and maintaining direct communication with technology vendors about system performance. Clinical leaders should speak with their networks regularly to understand how workflows function in practice, not just how they’re supposed to work on paper.
Network Checklist:
✅ Implement systematic feedback collection from frontline staff
✅ Establish ongoing communication protocols with healthcare technology partners
✅ Create feedback loops in the network to strategize on improving patient care
Improvement
Just as important as onsite observation during the Connexall Clinical Elevate program is the ongoing improvement through data collection, analysis, and review. This should happen before, during, and after implementation.
To create effective alarm management, you need to collect data and collaborate on a system of improvement. If you don’t track data for alarms, says Wilson, “How will you be able to make any kind of alarm management decision?”
Improvement Checklist:
✅ Implement data-driven oversight
✅ Establish ongoing alarm committees
✅ Review effectiveness metrics regularly
Collaboration
A key element of Connexall’s Clinical Elevate program is helping our client hospitals establish a functioning Alarm Management Committee. This cross-disciplinary group of internal stakeholders continues the oversight, review, and data collection long after the 12-month Clinical Elevate engagement ends.
When building these committees, we consciously include both IT and clinical leads. In fact, Wilson encourages the inclusion of a diversity of voices, from across the hospital, to create a culture of shared responsibility when it comes to alarm management.
Collaboration Checklist:
✅ Bridge the clinical-technical divide
✅ Foster communication between IT and clinical staff
✅ Create high-functioning collaborative implementation teams
Alignment
Leaders of successful implementations align teams around a shared vision and goal, breaking down silos and competing agendas.
Informatics, at its core, is about harmonizing technology, people, and processes. Doing this effectively drives both innovation and adoption. Establishing an Alarm Management Committee is one way to achieve this alignment, as it brings together a cross-functional team with a common objective: improve workflow efficiency and patient safety.
By establishing standardized practices in this setting, you can create a system that operates consistently. The shift in thinking from “let’s send every alarm” to “let’s take time to figure out which alarms make sense to send” increases trust, reduces alerts, and speeds up critical response.
Alignment Checklist:
✅ Establish a shared vision and goal
✅ Focus on providing value to clinicians and patients
✅ Build alarm management solutions that solve actual workflow problems
Learning
Embrace continuous learning as a catalyst for clinical excellence. With a growth mindset at the core, you can use digital tools and data-driven strategies to empower teams to learn, adapt, and elevate outcomes in an ever-evolving healthcare landscape.
Wilson notes that hospitals that approached alarm management with a growth mindset are enjoying the benefits years later. Their ongoing commitment to learning and adaptation allows their systems to evolve with the times.
Learning Checklist:
✅ Establish a culture of continuous learning
✅ Adapt systems as organizational needs evolve
✅ Proactively communicate with staff about expected workflow changes
Transformation: From Departmental Silos to Organizational Partnership
The C.L.I.N.I.C.A.L. Approach is transforming how healthcare organizations think about the relationship between technology and clinical practice, and helping leaders like you address the upstream source of alarm fatigue rather than just treating the symptoms.
It represents a fundamental transformation in organizational thinking about technology adoption:
From IT-Centered to Operationally Led and IT-Enabled:
When clinical leaders play a key role in technology decisions, the conversation shifts from technical specifications to patient care priorities.
From Alarm Repetition to Intelligent Filtering:
Leading organizations recognize that true safety comes from meaningful, actionable communication—not from sending every possible alert “just to be safe.”
From One-Time Setup to Continuous Evolution:
Implementation becomes an ongoing clinical practice rather than a project with an end-date, with regular review cycles that keep systems aligned with evolving needs.
From Resistance to Pull:
Success is achieved when clinicians begin requesting more capabilities rather than resisting the technology—a start-small, “pull” model where staff actively seek to expand the system’s role..
As you consider your own clinical technology implementations, ask yourself: Are you focused on the swimmers, struggling in the river, or are you ready to engage the clinical leaders in your organization and take the journey upstream? To solve alarm fatigue at the source. Together.
