A safe and interoperable distributed alarm notification system for PoC medical devices using IEEE 11073 SDC

The flood of alarms produced by Point-of-Care (PoC) medical devices in intensive care units (ICUs) and operating rooms (ORs) is a crucial issue of today's hospitals. Alarm fatigue and desensitization leads to the death of patients, noise worsens the patient's recovery process and causes burnout syndromes of caregivers, etc. Much research has been done in the last years to reduce false alarms and noise with smart and intelligent alarm systems. However, the situation has not improved. The developed systems are not used in the field, likely due to the “better-safe-than-sorry” mentality. Thus, we state that the first step to address alarm related problems is a safe and distributed system for alarm notifications. Therefore, we present mechanisms to generate alarm notifications safely at the place where they are needed by the caregivers, that is not necessarily the bedside. Our approach holds safety, risk management, and approval requirements. We use the new IEEE 11073 Service-oriented Device Connectivity (SDC) standard family. This ensures a safe interoperability of heterogeneous devices from multiple manufacturers, which is a major technical innovation, and makes the proposed system ready for future extensions like intelligent, computer-aided assistive systems. We therefore state that our mechanisms have a high potential to be used in the field and to improve clinical problems related to alarm notification systems. A demonstrator has been implemented for the proof of concept.