Remote analysis of physiological data from neurosurgical ICU patients

Recent technical advances in Internet-based client/server applications and new multimedia communications protocols are enabling the development of cost-effective, platform-independent solutions to the problem of remote access to continuously acquired physiological data. The UCLA Neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has developed a distributed computer system that provides access over the World Wide Web (WWW) to current and previously acquired physiological data, such as intracranial pressure, cerebral perfusion pressure, and heart rate from critical care patients. Physicians and clinical researchers can access these data through personal computers from their offices, from their homes, or even while on the road. The system creates and continuously updates a database of all monitored parameters in data formats that can readily be used for further clinical studies. This paper describes an extension to this system that allows for remote interaction with and analysis of the data via the WWW. Physicians can now pose a limited, predefined set of clinically relevant questions to the system without having to be at the patient's bedside.