Success Story
Caregility & Naygoya University Hopsital’s Joint Study Validates Feasibility of Virtual Nursing in Japan’s Healthcare Ecosystem
About Nagoya University Hospital
Nagoya University Hospital is a leading academic medical center in Japan, located in Showa-ku, Nagoya. As part of the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System, the hospital plays a central role in advancing patient care, medical research, clinical education, and healthcare innovation.
Serving as both a high-acuity care provider and a teaching hospital, Nagoya University Hospital supports complex clinical programs and helps train the next generation of healthcare professionals. Its clinical environment reflects many of the challenges facing hospitals across Japan, including rising care complexity, increased demand for specialized nursing support, workforce shortages, and the need to improve working conditions for nurses.
The Challenge
Healthcare organizations across Japan are navigating a convergence of pressures that are making care delivery increasingly complex. An aging population is contributing to higher patient acuity and more complex underlying conditions, while hospitals continue to face staffing shortages, growing workloads, and the need to support younger nurses as they develop clinical confidence and expertise.
In intensive care environments, these pressures are especially pronounced. Nurses in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) must provide continuous patient observation, timely assessments, hands-on care, documentation, information sharing, safety checks, and support for less experienced team members. These responsibilities require focus and precision, often competing for the bedside nurse’s time.
Nagoya University Hospital set out to evaluate whether virtual nursing could help address these challenges in a way that fit Japan’s clinical workflows and nursing structures. The goal was not simply to introduce technology, but to determine whether experienced virtual nurses could be integrated into the SICU care model to support documentation, education, patient monitoring, and clinical collaboration while preserving bedside nurse accountability and maintaining patient safety.
Virtual Nursing Proof-of-Concept
To evaluate the role of virtual nursing in Japan’s surgical ICU environment, Nagoya University Hospital implemented a joint demonstration with Caregility and Media Plus, Caregility’s domestic distributor in Japan.
The proof-of-concept program, conducted from January to February 2026, focused on evaluating how remote nursing support could be integrated into the daily workflow of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) without disrupting bedside care delivery. The program centered on two primary virtual nursing workflows: nursing documentation support and education-based nursing practice support.
In this model, bedside nurses maintained responsibility for direct patient care, clinical assessment, and final accountability for nursing documentation. Virtual nurses supported the process remotely by helping complete documentation based on information shared by the bedside care team. This collaborative workflow was designed to reduce the administrative burden on bedside nurses while preserving clinical oversight, documentation accuracy, and patient safety.
Patient Population
Patients in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) at Nagoya University Hospital
Supporting Technology
The Caregility APS200 Duo was deployed using a fixed bedside camera configuration
Staffing Model
One virtual nurse supported two to four patients
Virtual Nurse Expirience
11 virtual nurses providing support had an average of 16.1 years of nursing experience
Bedside Nurse Profile
The evaluation included 11 bedside nurses, with a median SICU experience of one year
Workflows Evaluated
Nurse guidance and documentation support (vital, flowsheet, SOAP notes, admission and discharge record entry)
The proof of concept validated that virtual nursing support can be smoothly integrated into SICU workflows without causing disruption. It also showed meaningful potential to reduce documentation burden and create more time for direct patient care.
- Nurse documentation time reduced by 50%
- 80% of bedside nurses reported reduced documentation time
- 60% of bedside nurses reported less patient care time lost to documentation
- 50% of bedside nurses reported improved documentation timeliness
- Remote support contributed beyond documentation
Time measurements showed that the median documentation time for bedside nurses without remote support was roughly 12 minutes. With remote support, that time fell roughly 50% to a median of just below 6 minutes, reducing nurses’ workload and freeing up more time for patient care.
What Comes Next
Following the demonstration, Nagoya University Hospital, Caregility, and Media Plus will continue evaluating how virtual nursing can be optimized for Japan’s healthcare environment. Areas of continued consideration include documentation workflow optimization, expansion of operational scope, clarification of responsibilities, educational effectiveness measurement, and the advancement of virtual nurse support models.
The findings will also inform further evaluation of virtual nursing in intensive care settings, including how remote nursing support can adapt to Japan’s clinical workflows, nursing structures, and reimbursement environment, with the goal of moving beyond technology implementation alone and helping establish a sustainable remote nursing support model suited to Japan’s healthcare delivery system.