Information Technology in Critical Care: Review of Monitoring and Data Acquisition Systems for Patient Care and Research

Abstract

There is a broad consensus that 21st century health care will require intensive use of information technology to acquire and analyze data and then manage and disseminate information extracted from the data. No area is more data intensive than the intensive care unit. While there have been major improvements in intensive care monitoring, the medical industry, for the most part, has not incorporated many of the advances in computer science, biomedical engineering, signal processing, and mathematics that many other industries have embraced. Acquiring, synchronizing, integrating, and analyzing patient data remain frustratingly difficult because of incompatibilities among monitoring equipment, proprietary limitations from industry, and the absence of standard data formatting. In this paper, we will review the history of computers in the intensive care unit along with commonly used monitoring and data acquisition systems, both those commercially available and those being developed for research purposes.

Implementation of an Evidence‐Based Practice Nursing Handover Tool in Intensive Care Using the Knowledge‐to‐Action Framework

“…Consequently, TLs navigated through pages of information to locate pertinent items to discuss. A major limitation of current ICU CIS is the inability to perform basic analyses (e.g., report trends in vital signs) and future CIS will need to be able to synthesize and translate data into meaningful, actionable information (De Georgia, Kaffashi, Jacono, & Loparo, ). The eMDS did not include patient and family educational needs as this was conveyed by the bedside nurse.…”

“…When purchasing a CIS, organizations need to ensure that the system can integrate data from multiple sources, the architecture facilitates complex data mining and analysis (to make sense of patient data), incorporates a user friendly visual display, and an interface that will promote informed decisions about patient care and the delivery of quality care to patients (De Georgia et al., ). When developing and implementing electronic handover tools, it is vital to work with a skilled information technology team to build a flexible interface that can be modified to accommodate user needs and meet national and local standards.…”

Specialized High-Intensity Clinical Settings: A Brief Review

“…In 2015 De Georgia [ 7 ] and colleagues at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, reviewed the status of information technology in the ICU and identifi ed the areas that remain challenging. Their review of efforts to introduce computers into the ICU focused on work beginning in the mid 1960s [ 37 ].…”

“…By 2015, several vendors marketed clinical information systems that offered "end-toend platforms for the ICU," yet serious limitations remained, including "incompatibilities among monitoring equipment, proprietary limitations from industry, and the absence of standard data formatting." They conclude that the integration of large amounts of data, both numeric and waveforms, will require the development of a critical care informatics architecture [ 7 ] in order to realize the full benefi ts that health information technology offers.…”

Clinical calculators in hospital medicine: Availability, classification, and needs

“…This approach has been shown to be beneficial across multiple fields of medicine [3][4][5]. The application of this approach in the clinical decision-making process implies the use of large computerized datasets [6,7], and has led to the development, introduction, and utilization of clinical calculators. Clinical calculators can exist as hardware or software [8,9].…”