Walk into a hospital wing, and what do you see and hear? Ping ping, wavy lines on display monitors. And where does the data embodied by the displays go? At most hospitals….
Clinical staff might look at the monitors to check the data as it is collected. They might scroll back to see what happened 8, 12 or 24 hours earlier. Occasionally they might want that kind of information if something really bad or unexpected happens, but even then they would probably rely on the medical notes rather than the real-time physiological data that came off the monitors. So usually not much is done with this data after it has been collected and displayed.
Thomas Heldt, an assistant professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wants hospitals to collect, store, and use that information to detect slow-progression problems – and stop them in their tracks. Boston Children’s Hospital has started doing so, and is having good results.
(NewScientist, 26 September 2015, paywall)
