The Monitoring Messenger: Mobile Patient Monitoring for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

There are a limited number of nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians in an ICU at a given time. To make decisions and plan therapies, these clinicians need to observe, assimilate and interpret a vast array of information originating from various devices located on the bedsides of multiple patients. Several shortcomings in existing technology limit their abilities: a) the fixed location of monitoring devices at the bedside; b) information overload from a multitude of devices, each with its own display; c) the lack of integration and interaction between these devices; d) the use of visually cumbersome displays, which were historically created for monitoring during anesthesia but never optimized for users in the ICU; and e) lack of context specific information (such as historical trends) to support patient data interpretation and clinical decision making.

This project proposes to address these challenges in ICU monitoring by developing a unified, portable, and intelligent device: the Monitoring Messenger. By integrating information from multiple monitoring devices, mechanical ventilators, infusion pumps and clinical information systems on a mobile device (tablet PC or smart phone); the Monitoring Messenger will allow nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians on or off-site, to continuously monitor critically ill patients, thereby increasing patient safety.

The proposed experiment will have two parts: Part I - Participatory design and Part II - Simulation Experiment.

In Part I - Participatory Design. Participatory design an inter-professional team of nurses, physicians, designers, engineers, and human factors experts will follow a user-centered design process to obtain the system requirements, and obtain feedback during the rapid prototyping phase of prototype development. While we expect the resulting prototype to be easy to use, support decision making, improve awareness of the patient's condition by health care providers and reduce mental workload, this methodology is not hypothesis driven.

Part II - Simulation Experiment. In simulated ICU scenarios, the critical care physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists will prioritize the care of critically ill patients. We expect them to do so more accurately with the use of Monitoring Messenger than with their regular tool (monitors, paper records etc). A potential outcome would be a decrease in mental workload as well as an increase in situational awareness.