Understanding Healthcare's Top Technology Hazard

Have you ever stood in line at a fast food restaurant listening to a loud, persistent beeping from the kitchen’s deep fryer?  If so, you’ve probably wanted to yell, “Hey, could somebody get the fries, or press a button to make that stupid dinging stop?”  The employees, meanwhile, have long since stopped paying attention to the beeping, their brains having assigned it to the pile of unnecessary stimuli that is safe to ignore.

In a clinical setting, the same problems have much worse consequences than burnt fries and annoyed customers.  In emergency rooms, operating rooms, ICUs, and patient’s hospital rooms, there is a constant cacophony of alarms designed to catch the attention of healthcare professionals.

Current clinical alarm technology is generally based on Data Threshold Science, which detects when a specific data threshold has been crossed and activates an alerting mechanism (usually an audible alarm).  Unfortunately, this creates a concept known as “alarm fatigue,” which has truly frightening consequences when encountered in complex clinical environments.  In such environments, critical alarms are often either ignored or even turned off...