Researchers working toward automating sedation in intensive care units

Researchers working toward automating sedation in intensive care units

Georgia Institute of Technology Research News) Researchers are one step closer to their goal of automating the management of sedation in hospital intensive care units. They have developed control algorithms that use clinical data to accurately determine a patient’s level of sedation and can notify medical staff if there is a change in the level.

 

 

From the February 15, 2011 Eureka news alert

Computer system for evaluating sedation level shows strong agreement with clinical assessment

		IMAGE: Georgia Tech researchers Wassim Haddad, Allen Tannenbaum and Behnood Gholami (left-right) and Northeast Georgia Medical Center chief medical informatics officer James Bailey have developed control algorithms to automate sedation in… Click here for more information.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Northeast Georgia Medical Center are one step closer to their goal of automating the management of sedation in hospital intensive care units (ICUs). They have developed control algorithms that use clinical data to accurately determine a patient’s level of sedation and can notify medical staff if there is a change in the level.

“ICU nurses have one of the most task-laden jobs in medicine and typically take care of multiple patients at the same time, so if we can use control system technology to automate the task of sedation, patient safety will be enhanced and drug delivery will improve in the ICU,” said James Bailey, the chief medical informatics officer at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, Ga. Bailey is also a certified anesthesiologist and intensive care specialist.

During a presentation at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, the researchers reported on their analysis of more than 15,000 clinical measurements from 366 ICU patients they classified as “agitated” or “not agitated.” Agitation is a measure of the level of patient sedation. The algorithm returned the same results as the assessment by hospital staff 92 percent of the time.

“Manual sedation control can be tedious, imprecise, time-consuming and sometimes of poor quality, depending on the skills and judgment of the ICU nurse,” said Wassim Haddad, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering. “Ultimately, we envision an automated system in which the ICU nurse evaluates the ICU patient, enters the patient’s sedation level into a controller, which then adjusts the sedative dosing regimen to maintain sedation at the desired level by continuously collecting and analyzing quantitative clinical data on the patient.”…

		IMAGE: Georgia Tech researchers Allen Tannenbaum, Wassim Haddad and Behnood Gholami (left-right) and Northeast Georgia Medical Center chief medical informatics officer James Bailey have developed control algorithms to automate sedation in… Click here for more information.

 

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This project is supported in part by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command (Grant No. 08108002). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigator (Wassim Haddad) and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Army….

 

 

 

 

Elsevier/MEDai enhances real-time clinical surveillance system for hospitals

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Elsevier/MEDai enhances real-time clinical surveillance system for hospitals

From the February 15, 2011 Eureka news alert

(Elsevier) Elsevier/MEDai, a leading provider of advanced clinical analytic health-care solutions, announced today the launch of the latest version of Pinpoint Review, its real-time, clinical surveillance system for hospitals. The new version will feature an expanded set of clinical watch triggers, expanded core measure alerts and three new predictions: ICU Admission Prediction, Length of Stay Prediction and Mortality Prediction.

ORLANDO, FL – 14 February, 2011 – Elsevier / MEDai, a leading provider of advanced clinical analytic healthcare solutions, announced today the launch of the latest version of Pinpoint Review®, its real-time, clinical surveillance system for hospitals. The new version will feature an expanded set of clinical watch triggers, expanded core measure alerts and three new predictions: ICU Admission Prediction, Length of Stay Prediction and Mortality Prediction.

“Hospitals are facing an enormous amount of pressure to provide better, safer care with fewer complications while managing costs,” said Swati Abbott, President of Elsevier / MEDai. “Elsevier / MEDai has enhanced its predictive analytics product to continuously give hospitals and clinicians the most up-to-date tools they need to lower mortality rates and healthcare costs, provide a higher quality of care, increase patient safety and maintain regulatory compliance.”

Pinpoint Review generates predictions for acute-care patients, focusing on the likelihood of a patient developing a complication, contracting a healthcare-acquired infection or being readmitted within 30 days of discharge, while patients are still in the hospital and there is time to adjust care to avoid a negative outcome.

With the expansion of Pinpoint Review’s new predictions, care givers are able to enhance their efforts in proactive care management. Pinpoint Review unlocks the power of clinical and administrative hospital data by utilizing predictive technologies to turn data into actionable information. Empowering today’s hospitals with the ability to predict whether or not a patient will be admitted to the ICU or higher intensity care unit, a predicted length of hospital stay or patient expiration goes a long way in driving down the cost of care and brings a proactive approach to quality improvement.

Pinpoint Review addresses the increasing pressure on hospitals from entities such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations to deliver a higher quality of care and fewer medical errors. Pinpoint Review alerts care providers to patients at risk for developing several of the conditions that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) no longer reimburse.