Diagnostic, therapeutic, didactic, data bank utilization of computerized monitoring in a critical care center

At the beginning of their discovery informatic technique procedures and methodologies generated a great wave of hopes for progress in theoretical and practical fields of human activity, but when passing to concrete application, an ebb phase followed. Recent theoretical and technical progress, however, has generated an enormous new up-surge of interest for applications of informatic processing in all fields of science. Medicine in the last three decades has gone through the same phases observed in other disciplines. In the ICU the potentiality of exploitation of the informatic techniques appeared enormous, however, initially from a practical point of view it found only limited, sectorial experimentation and implementation, but afterwards a limited and slow process of parcellar infiltration, the high tide of informatic, has broken the dam and deeply advanced in its territory, obliging the staff to a great effort of cultural and technical updating to cope with it. After recalling some of the history of Computer Science or Informatic, even if history was only yesterday, we will present some examples of the hand made experience of an ICU, (namely ours) with limited economical resources, and whose interest in this field arises from actual needs, personal interest and enthusiasm of a staff who works, on its free time, after fulfilling its stressing routine.