Session S24.2

Evaluation of a Long-Term Continuous Full Disclosure Archiving System for Multi-Parameter Patient Monitoring Devices

SP Nelwan, MCJ de Wijs, TB van Dam, W Scholz, KJ Fuchs,
MJB van Ettinger, SH Meij, NHJJ van der Putten, J Lipton

Erasmus University
Rotterdam, Netherlands

Patients admitted to intensive cardiac care units and step down units are closely monitored 24 hours a day by either multi-parameter patient monitors or multi-lead telemetry devices. Although most commercial patient monitoring vendors provide dedicated workstations to temporarily store the waveforms, parameters and events (for example 72 hours), this data will be lost after that period unless clinicians initiate a print out of information for archival purposes.
The Erasmus MC has developed the eData TapeRec system which continuously collects and stores waveforms, trend parameters and monitoring alarms from the online patient monitors in the intensive care cardiology unit (8 beds), intensive care thoracic surgery (10 beds), medium care units (3 units of 16 transmitters) and operating rooms (4 recovery and 4 prep). The system continuously collects up to 168 hours (1 week) of up to 24 waveforms and 128 trend parameters. This is similar to the data collection functionality of a cockpit flight data recorder. The system automatically starts data collection from newly admitted patients and stops after patient discharge. For offline storage, data can be stored on a CD or DVD and requires about 600 Mb for a 24-hour recording of a single patient. The system provides online, web-based reviewing of the data and supports several export interfaces, including: comma-separated text files (CSV), Octave/Matlab, European Data Format (EDF), and MIT Physionet files.
Starting in 2004 the system was made available to researchers and high-end users in our institute. Since then, 5 other (clinical) research medical centers have also adopted the tool. eData TapeRec has enabled a number of clinical research studies which made use of its abilities to review, store and archive all monitoring data and especially its capability to export waveforms for re-analysis of specific segments or channels. Apart from its primary goal, the system is also used for forensic and archival purposes. For example, in the operating room, the medical OR documentation can be supplemented with the complete full disclosure patient monitoring record as archived by the system.
In conclusion, eData TapeRec is a tool for storing, reviewing and archiving all the waveform, parameter and alarm data from patient monitoring devices and has been used for more than 5 years by clinicians and researchers from multiple institutes.

(Abstract Control Number: 255)