Physician Preference Cardiac Alert Modality system

Abstract

Since the parameters used for diagnosis may differ from physician to physician, the attending medical staff often finds it confusing to make a decision as to whether or not to notify the particular physician of their patient's present condition and wait for the physician or to act on their own. This thesis is an attempt at developing a system that inculcates the diagnosis routine into the critical patient monitoring system with alarm capabilities, thus assisting the attending medical staff with a pre-determined set of patient emergencies and helping them in the timely diagnosis of the probable cause. Since the system also has the added advantage of the diagnosis module, it is helpful to the attending medical staff in acting immediately upon possible patient condition deterioration as it begins. The Physician Preference Cardiac Alert Modality (PPCAM) system is not intended to replace physicians, but to aid them. When used in the physicians' office, this system may assist them in their independent patient diagnosis and evaluation. This system design makes use of the obtained patient data, medication history, physical examination results, and trend panel readings, which provide understanding of the patient's state. The most important aspects of the PPCAM system, the parameter estimation process and the diagnosis module programming are discussed. This is an attempt at developing a simple system for data integration, clinical information presentation and possible diagnoses in an attempt to build a rule-based automated cardiac monitoring system at a reduced cost as compared to current commercial systems that perform some of these functions.