Big Data makes intensive care better
Reduce false alarms, predict critical complications: this could improve patient safety and this is where the project "ICU Cockpit" comes in.
One single critically ill patient treated in an intensive care or emergency unit generates up to 100 GB of data per day. It is often not possible to use the flood of information to identify risk situations and to make quick decisions.
Fewer false alarms – better patient safety
Conventional monitoring systems trigger around 700 alarms per patient per day, i.e. around one alarm every two minutes. A significant proportion of these are false alarms. If the number of false alarms could be significantly reduced, the amount of data would be much lower, which would make it easier to recognise critical situations and thus increase patient safety. The neurosurgical intensive care unit of the University Hospital Zurich, ETH Zurich and IBM Research are working on this in the "ICU Cockpit" project. The principal investigator Emanuela Keller describes the long-term goal: "With this project, we want to initiate a fundamental development in emergency and intensive care medicine – and thus significantly improve the way hospitals work in day-to-day practice."