Implementation Issues and Challenges for Computerized Clinical Protocols for Management of Mechanical Ventilation in ARDS Patients

摘要

In the process of implementing complex computerized protocols for the management of ventilation in ARDS patients several unique problems were encountered in the areas of temporal dependency, testing, decision making architecture, data integrity, user interaction and order generation. The protocols are different from many of the applications previously developed in that they depend not only on the current status of the patient but the temporal sequence of events that led up to the present time. This necessitated timely charting which was not a small requirement in the demanding ICU environment. New testing tools had to be developed to simulate a temporal sequence of events so that all branches of the protocols could be thoroughly tested. The blackboard control architecture originally implemented had to be abandoned for the sake of data integrity. The inability to have interactive communication, during execution of the protocols required a thorough re-evaluation of the data which was routinely charted. The mechanism for triggering execution of the protocols had to be redesigned to provide shorter response time for the ICU environment. This new version of the protocols has been used in 16 patients for a total of 3553 therapy suggestions. It is now being generally accepted in the ICU and routinely used to treat a wide variety of respiratory failure patients.