A Parallel Software Architecture for Building Intelligent Medical Monitors

摘要

Intensive care units (ICUs) become more complicated each day; the number of devices to monitor various aspects of a patient's status continues to increase. Intelligent monitors attempt to reduce this complexity by interpreting the data and presenting a high-level summary of a patient's condition. We propose a parallel software architecture for constructing intelligent medical monitors, the process trellis; we contrast the process trellis to other software architectures that have been used for heuristic medical programs: blackboards and production rules. The process trellis is an explicitly parallel structure, and therefore can take advantage of the performance gains available from parallel computer hardware. Its use does not, however, presuppose any expertise in parallel programming. We are currently building an Intelligent Cardiovascular Monitor (ICM) using the process trellis. We describe the ICM and the use of the process trellis architecture in its construction.