SIMON: a distributed real-time system for critical care patient monitoring and event detection

Abstract

Real-time patient monitoring is an essential task in the critical care unit. Care providers need to process a large amount of data obtained from patient monitoring devices and the hospital information system. Information overload can lead to sub-optimal decisions and therapeutic actions. SIMON is a system being developed to address these issues by acquiring and processing data from the bedside monitoring devices and the hospital information system. The initial SIMON prototype was deployed in the Coronary Care Unit of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Experience acquired with this system revealed the need for a change in architecture and a complete reimplementation. The revised SIMON has been designed with distribution in mind to achieve reliability, expandability, scalability, and flexibility. It is divided into three layers. The Data Layer provides the functionality to collect the information. The Task Layer implements signal evaluation functions to detect required event. The Knowledge Layer provides high-level reasoning capabilities. Each layer is subdivided into separate but communicating components. This thesis begins with an introduction to patient monitoring systems, the previous SIMON architecture and the revised SIMON architecture are then described. This is followed by a description of the Data Layer, the Task Layer, and the revised Task Layer. We conclude with a discussion on results we have obtained, the current status of the system, and future research recommendations.