Clinical Evaluation of Automated Arrhythmia Monitoring and its Integration with Respiratory Monitoring in a General Computerized Information System

Abstract

At Sodersjukhuset, Stockholm a medical intensive care unit (ICU) was started in 1955 by the late Gosta von Reis. This unit took an active part in the development of the “Scandinavian method” for the treatment of barbiturate poisoning. Later interest was also focused on myasthenia gravis. In the sixties the unit was doubled in size to incorporate facilities for coronary care. During these years the medico-technical unit began collaborating with the Departments of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute and Medical Informatics, Linkoping University. This work dealt with the development of new ventilators and also resulted in a computer program for the analysis of cardiac catheterization data (Nygârds et al 1976). In several pilot projects we studied different uses of computer technique in the ICU were studied. One was the successful use of an analog computer for blood pressure regulation in barbiturate poisoning with shock (Bevegard et al 1969). Following these pilot studies we decided to concentrate on arrhythmia surveillance since we regarded automatic non-invasive cardiac monitoring to be fundamental to successful intensive care.