Silent ICU based on IEEE 11073 SDC

Abstract Patients and caregivers suffer from alarm-related noise in today’s hospitals. While this is a topic for all fields of care, this challenge is especially relevant for intensive care units (ICUs). The noise harms patients, hinders the recovery process, or can even lead to psychosis. For the caregivers, noise causes an enormous stress level and in combination with the high number of clinically irrelevant or false alarms it leads to alarm fatigue and desensitization. These problems result in documented deaths of patients. Therefore, we present a demonstrator of a Silent ICU. Based on a distributed alarm system, the medical devices at the bedside do not create any audio alarm signals, as long as a remote alarm notification system is connected and works properly. An ICU bed place consists of devices from different manufacturers. Thus, a standardized interconnection is necessary. Therefore, we use IEEE 11073 Service-oriented Device Connectivity (SDC) to create a cross-manufacturer distributed alarm system with components from three different companies. A fourth company provides a documentation system for this demonstrator. Patients and caregivers will greatly benefit from Silent ICUs and smart distributed alarm systems that will be build based on interoperable cross-manufacturer environments.