Detecting False Alarms by Analyzing Alarm-Context Information: Algorithm Development and Validation.

Chrystinne Fernandes,Simon Miles,Carlos José Pereira Lucena

doi:10.2196/15407

Chrystinne Fernandes, Simon Miles + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.2196/15407

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Abstract

BackgroundAlthough alarm safety is a critical issue that needs to be addressed to improve patient care, hospitals have not given serious consideration about how their staff should be using, setting, and responding to clinical alarms. Studies have indicated that 80%-99% of alarms in hospital units are false or clinically insignificant and do not represent real danger for patients, leading caregivers to miss relevant alarms that might indicate significant harmful events. The lack of use of any intelligent filter to detect recurrent, irrelevant, and/or false alarms before alerting health providers can culminate in a complex and overwhelming scenario of sensory overload for the medical team, known as alarm fatigue.ObjectiveThis paper’s main goal is to propose a solution to mitigate alarm fatigue by using an automatic reasoning mechanism to decide how to calculate false alarm probability (FAP) for alarms and whether to include an indication of the FAP (ie, FAP_LABEL) with a notification to be visualized by health care team members designed to help them prioritize which alerts they should respond to next.MethodsWe present a new approach to cope with the alarm fatigue problem that uses an automatic reasoner to decide how to notify caregivers with an indication of FAP. Our reasoning algorithm calculates FAP for alerts triggered by sensors and multiparametric monitors based on statistical analysis of false alarm indicators (FAIs) in a simulated environment of an intensive care unit (ICU), where a large number of warnings can lead to alarm fatigue.ResultsThe main contributions described are as follows: (1) a list of FAIs we defined that can be utilized and possibly extended by other researchers, (2) a novel approach to assess the probability of a false alarm using statistical analysis of multiple inputs representing alarm-context information, and (3) a reasoning algorithm that uses alarm-context information to detect false alarms in order to decide whether to notify caregivers with an indication of FAP (ie, FAP_LABEL) to avoid alarm fatigue.ConclusionsExperiments were conducted to demonstrate that by providing an intelligent notification system, we could decide how to identify false alarms by analyzing alarm-context information. The reasoner entity we described in this paper was able to attribute FAP values to alarms based on FAIs and to notify caregivers with a FAP_LABEL indication without compromising patient safety.

Highlights

OverviewIn our previous work [1], we developed a software framework for remote patient monitoring with notification capabilities that were handled by the use of software agents
As a strategy to mitigate the alarm fatigue issue, we present a new approach to monitor patients by using an intelligent notification process supported by a reasoning mechanism
This mechanism associates a false alarm probability (FAP) to alarms based on their real-time context information, including (1) information about a patient’s circumstances, such as his or her repositioning in bed, and localization, which is tracked in real time using wearable devices with GPS, and (2) information about sensors, including battery charge life, the last time the patient’s skin was prepared to receive electrodes, and the last time electrodes were changed, among others

Summary

Introduction

OverviewIn our previous work [1], we developed a software framework for remote patient monitoring with notification capabilities that were handled by the use of software agents. These alerts are often false alarms that do not represent real danger for patients In this case, the lack of use of any intelligent filter to detect an indication of false alarms before alerting health providers can culminate in a context of a sensory overload for the medical team. The lack of use of any intelligent filter to detect an indication of false alarms before alerting health providers can culminate in a context of a sensory overload for the medical team This context can result in alarm fatigue and compromise health providers’ attention, leading them to miss relevant alarms that might announce significant harmful events. The author concluded that current monitoring systems are poor predictors of untoward events

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