PATIENT DATA ACQUISITION AND TELEMEDICINE ACCESS FORA DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEM

Michael Barton
MScEE candidate

Dr. Monique Frize
Professor, Electrical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, POBox 4400, Fredericton, NB, Canada, E3B 5A3

ABSTRACT

Patients in intensive care units may be connected to twenty devicesor more. With this information overload, medical staff need a tool to assistin the collection, organisation and analysis of the data. Such a systemshould gather data, organise it and store it, and present the informationto a patient management system (accessible both on- or off-site). Full-featuredmedical image display stations have been developed and workstations arebeing used in some surgical suites and critical care units. The main complaintfrom operators of these systems is that their user-interfaces are too complicated.

The work detailed here is a portion of a larger clinical diagnostictool under development. The overall project may be broken into three majorparts: data collection; data analysis; and output of results. The workreported herein concerns the data acquisition and reporting of results.Serial data collection from critical care monitors such as ventilators,pulse oximeters, and heart monitors has been achieved. Currently, the datafrom monitors is directed to a PC through an IBM multi-port I/O interface.This interface is smart and flexible, allowing expansion up to 32 inputsin the present system and acting as an independent sub-system for the hostPC.

The data collector and data manager are being linked to an advanceduser-friendly graphical user interface. Other developments include a linkto a decision-support system made up of: a knowledge-based system (KBS)providing ten closest matching cases to the newest presented case; andan artificial neural network (ANN) estimating outcomes such as mortality,length of stay, and duration of ventilation [3]. Remote site access (telemedicine)features will be useful for physicians checking on patients from home orthe office and for small hospitals consulting larger ones to decide onpatient transfer or on-site treatment.

REFERENCES

[1] S. Graham, D. Hoyt, Heart Lung Interface, Senior Thesis,Dept. of Electrical Eng., University of New Brunswick, 1993.

[2]M. LeBrun, Critical Care Monitor Interface, Senior Thesis,Dept. of Electrical Eng., University of New Brunswick, 1992.

[3] M. Frize, F.G. Solven, M. Stevenson, B. Nickerson, T. Buskard, &K. Taylor, Computer Assisted Decision Support System for Patient Managementin an Intensive Care Unit, MedInfo '95, July, Vancouver, 1995, pp.1009-1012.

[4] K.B. Taylor, B.G. Nickerson, M. Frize, F.G. Solven, & V. Dunfield,Use of Case-Based Reasoning to Assist Patient Management in an IntensisveCare Unit, Proc. of the joint conference on COMP and the CMBES, Ottawa,1993, pp. 248-249.

[5] M. Frize, K.B. Taylor, B.G. Nickerson, F.G. Solven, H. Borkar, AKnowledge-Based System for the Intensive Care Unit, Proc. of the 15thAnn. Int. Conf. of the IEEE EMBS, San Diego, Oct. 1993.

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[8] D. Pfeifer, M. Chwialkowski, R. Parkey, R. Peshock, Full-FeaturedMedical Image Display Station Based on Standard PC Hardware, Proc.IEEE Eng. in Med. & Biol., vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 1185-1186, 1991.

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