[Patient data management systems or unit data management systems. Two clinical management perspectives in Intensive...

The need of availability of information able to describe the activity performed in ICU has two different sides. The first related with the monitoring of the patient himself, his clinical situation changes and the checking of attitudes and reactions of the clinical team related to these changes. The other one focused on the possibility to describe appropriately the general activity of the unit, the epidemiological characteristics of the attended population and the indicators of efectitivity and efficiency that could be used for a continous quality improving. The first one has been named as patient level control, and the second one as unit level control. Industry tried to develop potent instruments (informatized) able to <> information from patient monitoring systems in order to cope with the first quoted need (the so called patient data management systems [PDMS]), but has not yet be able to cross the line between the individual patient and the global unit activity. Authors emphasize the need of having the unit data management systems (UDMS), a not solved problem, as a complement on real time on line information obtained from patients.