Developing a system for advanced monitoring and intelligent drug administration in critical care units using ontologies

When a patient enters an intensive care unit (ICU), either after surgery or due to a serious clinical condition, his vital signs are continually changing, forcing the medical experts to make rapid and complex decisions, which frequently imply modifications on the dosage of drugs being administered. Life of patients at critical units depends largely on the wisdom of such decisions. However, the human factor is sometimes a source of mistakes that lead to incorrect or inaccurate actions. This work presents an expert system based on a domain ontology that acquires the vital parameters from the patient monitor, analyzes them and provides the expert with a recommendation regarding the treatment that should be administered. If the expert agrees, the system modifies the drug infusion rates being supplied at the infusion pumps in order to improve the patient's physiological status. The system is being developed at the IMEDIR Center (A Coruna, Spain) and it is being tested at the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) of the Meixoeiro Hospital (Vigo, Spain), which is a specific type of ICU exclusively aimed to treat patients who have underwent heart surgery or that are affected by a serious coronary disorder.