Modern critical care is characterized by the collection of large volumes of data and the making of urgent patient care decisions. The two do not necessarily go together easily. For many years the hope has been that ICU data management systems could play a meaningful role in ICU decision support. These hopes now have a basis in fact, and this book details the history, methodology, current status, and future prospects for critical care decision support systems. By focusing on real and operational systems, the book demonstrates the importance of integrating data from diverse clinical data...

This monograph series is intended to provide medical information scien- tists, health care administrators, health care providers, and computer sci- ence professionals with successful examples and experiences of computer applications in health care settings. Through the exposition of these com- puter applications, we attempt to show what is effective and efficient and hopefully provide some guidance on the acquisition or design of informa- tion systems so that costly mistakes can be avoided. The health care industry is currently being pushed and pulled from all directions - from the clinical...