Improved Patient Monitoring with a Novel Multisensory Smartwatch Application

Abstract

The design of medical alarms has been heavily criticized in the past decade. Auditory medical alarms have poor learnability, discernibility, and relevance, leading to poor patient outcomes, and alarm fatigue, and overall poor informatic system design. We developed a novel trimodal patient monitoring smartwatch application for patient monitoring. Participants completed two phases: (1) control and (2) our novel trimodal system while identifying alarms (heart rate, oxygenation, and blood pressure) and completing a cognitively demanding task. Alarms were auditory icons presented as either solo or co-alarms. Participant performance was assessed by accuracy and response time (RT) of alarm identification. Using the novel system, accuracy was significantly improved overall (p < 0.01) and in co-alarm situations (p < 0.01), but not for solo alarms (p = 0.484). RT was also significantly faster (p < 0.01) while using the novel system for all alarm types. Participants reported decreased mental workload using the novel system. This feasibility study shows that our novel alarm system performs better than current standards. Improvements in accuracy, RT and perceived mental workload indicate the potential of this system to have a positive impact on medical informatic systems and clinical monitoring, for both the patient and the clinician.

The effect of intelligent management interventions in intensive care units to reduce false alarms: An integrative review

“…After the algorithm upgrade, alarms from the monitor only need to go through one server to process the alarm, and the handheld device can display the alarm message and is also allowed to display the waveform of the signal. After a second system upgrade, the alarm signal can be accessed in real-time on the handheld device [ [29] , [30] , [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] ]. Not only that, the intelligent means of alarm management have also transitioned from pagers to customized software for smartphones and smartwatches developed by different research teams [ 29 , 30 , 35 ].…”

“…After a second system upgrade, the alarm signal can be accessed in real-time on the handheld device [ [29] , [30] , [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] ]. Not only that, the intelligent means of alarm management have also transitioned from pagers to customized software for smartphones and smartwatches developed by different research teams [ 29 , 30 , 35 ]. In addition, the upgraded alarm system can send alarms to different people and different devices at different times.…”

“…Three studies provided self-designed applications or software [ 30 , 34 , 35 ], all of which used sensory features to varying degrees. Visual notifications appeared on monitors installed with customized software [ 34 ] when repeated alarms from nurses for the same infraction were triggered and muted for a specified period.…”

“…Five studies provided interventions for more than two months [ 29 , 31 , [33] , [34] , [35] ], while two of the remaining tested in simulated settings for less than one day [ 30 , 32 ]. Two studies provided only interventions for the intelligent management of clinical alarms [ 27 , 29 ], and five studies also provided other measures such as changing processes, changing default thresholds, staff education, delaying the time for alarms [ 29 , 31 , 33 , 34 ] ( Table 2 ).…”

Blockchain ingrained Electronic Health Record Management System with Patient Control, Data Quality &amp; Security assurance and Cloud storage

“…It will be highly worthful to provide Blockchain based solutions for EHRs management, by considering aforementioned all the requirements which not only secure enough, efficient (lightweight [33]) but also giving maximum patient controls. In [34] with the help of multi-sensory applications a novel approach for patient monitoring proposed, which is beneficial for both patients and staff of intensive care units (ICU) for necessary rescue in emergency situations.…”