Monitoring the status of critically-ill patients in the hospital can be difficult because of the need to make high-stake decisions. It's important in intensive care to have seconds.
According to the study, the role could soon be filled by an automated system. Software could be trained to spot changes in a person's consciousness from simple markers that are already being recorded, according to researchers.
While vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure are tracked continuously using monitors, brain function and consciousness are much harder to monitor.
The monitoring of brain functions could be continuous and constant in the hands of an electronic system.
It's still early days in developing such technology, but preliminary results suggest it's a feasible approach, and it would be relatively easy and affordable to implement in most intensive care units. It could possibly be used in bedside monitoring equipment.
"Consciousness isn't a light switch that's on or off, it's more like a dimmer switch, with degrees of consciousness that change over the course of the day."
One data point is obtained if you only check patients once a day. You could see a clearer picture with our method.
The researchers were able to track feeds from a number of emergency room sensors, including heart rate, breathing rate, brain temperature, and blood oxygen levels. There is no need for the patient to be alert or awake.
Data from a total of 239 patients with hemorrhages were analyzed in the study, allowing the team to map levels of consciousness against the sensor readings, before using that data to develop an algorithm that could determine the former.
It was possible to classify patients' states of consciousness just as well as trained clinicians and more complex, expensive equipment.
It means that the tool could be used in virtually any hospital setting, not just neurological intensive care units.
There is still a lot of work to be done. It hasn't been shown that the system can accurately predict consciousness 24/7.
Existing methods for checking up on patients can take a lot of time and can only be done occasionally. The patient needs to be responsive or have expensive equipment. All those problems will be solved by this.
As well as decreasing the demands on health professionals, the researchers think their newly developed algorithm can improve outcomes for patients, as well as inform future research into the somewhat mysterious state of consciousness
Kleinberg says that consciousness is hard to study because there isn't much data to work with. It could be possible to treat these patients more effectively if round-the-clock data showed how patients' consciousness changes.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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