CalmWave vs Sickbay (2026)
CalmWave and Sickbay use bedside device data to support hospital monitoring and alarm management. CalmWave recommends patient specific threshold changes for nurses to apply; Sickbay supplies a broader infrastructure for viewing physiologic data, configuring monitoring and analyzing its history. CalmWave aligns monitor signals with medications, interventions and EHR events. Recommendations pass checks for stability, recent changes, alarm frequency and other conditions before reaching a nurse with a supporting timeline. The nurse accepts or rejects the suggestion and changes the monitor. Its promise to reduce alarms without missing patient changes exceeds the available detection evidence, despite these review controls. Sickbay captures waveforms and device data across manufacturers, combines them with EHR information and makes them available to bedside teams and virtual command centers. Clinicians can configure thresholds by patient and signal, while Analytics supports research on the stored archive. The platform supplements existing monitoring and must not serve as the sole alarm source. Its current product descriptions emphasize configured logic rather than a specified trained model generating threshold advice. CalmWave fits units targeting alarm burden through reviewable recommendations within physician orders. Sickbay fits hospitals building shared device data access, telemetry and monitoring analytics across services. Both keep clinical decisions with staff, while addressing different layers of the alarm workflow.
- The immediate goal is reducing bedside alarm burden.
- Nurses should review a rationale before changing thresholds.
- Medication and intervention timing should constrain recommendations.
- A published annual ICU bed subscription is useful.
- Device data from several manufacturers needs one monitoring platform.
- Bedside and virtual teams need live and historical waveforms.
- Clinicians want configurable thresholds and risk indicators.
- Research teams need access to a stored physiologic data archive.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. CalmWave and Sickbay are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | CalmWave | Sickbay |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Hospital & Unit Operations | Inpatient Deterioration & Risk Monitoring |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, US | Houston, Texas, United States |
| Website | calmwave.com | sickbay.com |
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
CalmWave combines bedside monitor signals with medications, interventions and EHR events to help hospital teams manage alarm burden. Its data platform aligns those streams into a shared clinical timeline, and its machine learning engine recommends patient specific alarm thresholds.
Source: AI Health Index, October 2026
Sickbay, from Medical Informatics Corp (MIC) in Houston, is a vendor neutral platform that captures physiologic data and waveforms from bedside monitors, ventilators and other devices across manufacturers, stores them. It also takes in EHR labs, medications and admissions, and routes device data to the EHR.
Source: AI Health Index, October 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do CalmWave and Sickbay work with the EHR?
For CalmWave, the training guide shows nurses opening the appropriate patient chart, using single signon and changing the bedside monitor manually. A January 2026 founder account calls the Philips and Epic integrations bidirectional, but does not document the outbound resources, permissions or production write transactions.
With Sickbay, the 2015 510(k) summary describes EHR labs, medications and admissions received in HL7 and stored for redisplay, and device data routed to the EHR; the company describes HL7 interfaces pushing cleansed telemetry data into the EHR for documentation and billing. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified October 15, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How are CalmWave and Sickbay priced and sold?
In CalmWave's case, the listing describes implementation support and training, but does not separately price integration labor, hardware changes or additional service levels. Its general no refund statement sits alongside a linked service contract containing a specific nonconformance remedy.
For Sickbay, the company says the platform supports unlimited users and runs on the hospital's own infrastructure, sells through reseller partners that offer managed services, and markets savings on bedside integration hardware and remote nursing station costs. Nothing states the unit of charge (monitored beds, device interfaces or data volume), implementation fees, or who pays for connectivity hardware. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified October 15, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do CalmWave and Sickbay handle patient data?
With CalmWave, the service addendum uses a purpose based retention standard, supports instructed deletion and allows internal service improvement.
The company says Sickbay is hosted only on the hospital's own network or cloud under the hospital's security standards, which keeps the archive in the customer's environment. The privacy notice of 12 May 2026 states that it does not cover services involving protected health information, and no document for the service addresses retention, de-identification or secondary use. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified October 15, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which settings and specialties do CalmWave and Sickbay cover?
For CalmWave, a February 2026 founder account describes operation across 14 hospitals, but does not provide matched outcomes by hospital, patient population or specialty. The wider platform addresses clinical engineering, nursing management, patient flow and operational oversight.
With Sickbay, the 2015 clearance covers hospital use, and its summary names ICU and emergency patients. The company now markets ICU, telemetry and virtual command center use, emergency departments, neonatal and pediatric care, and a rural health offering, and its post on the Intel Capital partnership mentions at-home monitoring, which the clearance's hospital setting does not reach. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified October 15, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers.
CalmWave is based in Seattle; Sickbay is a Medical Informatics Corp product from Houston. CalmWave lists $7,152 per ICU bed for 12 months, separate from newer services. Sickbay has no public price and runs on hospital controlled infrastructure.