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Fig. 2 | BMC Anesthesiology

Fig. 2

From: Design of a Novel Multifunction Decision Support Display for Anesthesia Care: AlertWatch® OR

Fig. 2

The AlertWatch® Display. The above AlertWatch® display is analogous to the primary flight display in aviation, Fig. 1. It receives information from physiologic monitors, AIMS, patients’ history and physical for co-morbidities and laboratory systems and displays this information in readily identifiable icons of human organs. It is color coded to signify: normal range (green), marginal (yellow), and abnormal range (red). Organs highlighted in orange have comorbidities. The left-side of the display provides patient case data, calculated intake and output (I&O) balance, presence of infectious disease, preoperative pain score and the presence of infusions. Text alerts are presented on right-side of the display in the following hierarchy: black text are informational, red text for important alerts and scrolling red text for those which need immediate attention, this figure has no text alerts, see Fig. 4a. There are 54 alerts originating from the 250 pieces of information continuously being extracted from the medical records. No data are stored in AlertWatch®, just retrieved from the EMR and presented. The central portion of the display is composed of icons of organ systems: brain, lungs, heart, liver kidneys. The color of the brain and level within the brain signifies the age-adjusted anesthetic level while the level within the heart signifies the fluid status with respect to I&O balance; green +/− 20% of estimated blood volume (EBV), yellow +/− 40% of EBV (high or low level) and red ≥40% EBV positive or negative (very high or very low level). This patient has an I&O of − 1595 so is in the yellow range and the heart is filled to the low yellow level. If there is an invasive arterial catheter or central venous catheter the fluid level and color within the heart will be guided by the normal ranges of SPV or CVP. The Green, Yellow and Red ranges for all variables are configurable. This patient has lung and cardiac disease signified by the orange outline. They also have diabetes noted by the orange outline of the glucose. All ranges/colors are presented in Additional File 1. For a more complete description go to the website go to the website: http://www.alertwatch.com

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