Patient alert and decision support system

Abstract

Safety of critically ill patients in intensive care units is an important aspect of medical care. There are many factors contributing to shortcomings and errors in patient care in the intensive care setting, such as long working hours, high levels of stress, lack of enough people, may cause human errors and affecting the effectiveness of the decisions of the physician. Several attempts have been made to increase the effectiveness of such decisions by issuing early alerts on adverse patient conditions. However, such alerts are based on single parameter variations but not on the relationship between multiple parameter variations. Thus, inability to provide an effective communication model causes a considerable bottleneck in intensive care unit (ICU) operations. The proposed model is an integrated solution which identifies the adverse patient conditions on multiple parameter variations and then provides predictive treatment suggestions on those identified conditions. It follows an interactive communication cycle in order to properly notify the responsible physicians. Results show that the system is capable of early identification of adverse conditions and providing suitable treatment suggestions compared to physicians themselves make decisions on same patient conditions.