Database Considerations for an ICU Patient Data Management System
Abstract A Patient Data Management System (PDMS) is being developed for use in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Montreal Children’s Hospital. The PDMS acquires real-time patient data from a network of physiological bedside monitors and facilitates the review and interpretation of this data by presenting it as graphical trends, charts and plots on a color video display. Due to the large amounts of data involved, the data storage and data management processes are an important task of the PDMS. The data management structure must integrate varied data types and provide database support for different applications, while preserving the real-time acquisition of network data. This paper outlines a new data management structure which is based primarily on OS/2’s Extended Edition relational database. The relational database design is expected to solve the query shortcomings of the previous data management structure, as well as offer support for security and concurrency. The discussion will also highlight future advantages available from a network implementation.
