Developing an automated clinical trending tool for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to develop a clinical trending tool which tracks patient vital signs and generates alerts for deviations from a defined baseline. This work analyzes four types of patients: a stable patient, a patient who left the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for an extended period, and two patients who experienced a clinical deterioration. By displaying visual tools which are more intuitive and user friendly for physicians and alerting for short term vital sign deviations of these different patients, we aim to identify trends which may precede clinical deterioration in patients.