Database Based Reasoning for Real Time Monitoring and Data Analysis in Intensive Care Units

The complexity of the monitored data available in modern intensive care units (ICUs) means that they are best processed, for presentation to medical staff, by expert system techniques. This article describes an expert system that has an appropriately designed inference engine, handling the temporal considerations inherent in monitoring and manages data acquisition via a Medical Information Bus. Also, we will describe how we extended our monitoring system in ICUs by writing an interface allowing communication in dynamic SQL with a relational database management system. The extended system facilitates both permanent filing of case data and the use of filed data by the rules of the expert system, and allows automatic intelligent screening of data prior to permanent filing so as to ensure data reliability.