It seems that many upstart companies and established companies are addressing this in a multitude of ways. While this is admirable in terms of actual alarm management; we feel that the majority of alarms may be addressed at the clinical level…as the first pillar.
For example in terms of pulse oximetry there has been a lot of research dedication around motion artifact reduction. In terms of patient monitoring (hence where a lot of false alarms occur), based upon thirty (30) years of experience this is where good electrode prep and placement of electrodes is the first start.
The second requirement is to tailor the alarm profile of the patient monitor to the patient. If the patient is in chronic atrial fib. you probably want to turn off the irregular heart rate alarm.
Integra Systems, Inc., is working with an incubated company www.epfl.ch to solve first time the issues of providing better signal processing algorithms that will potentially decrease the propensity for false alarms.
This we feel is attacking this issue at the foundation level; and will drive major change process at the enterprise level with all converged alarm platforms.
