Angel Gómez

Intelligent management of processes in a ICU telemedicine system

This work presents a project of telemedicine applied to Intensive Care Units (ICUs). The implemented communications scheme can be adapted to patients interned in an ICU as well as to remote patients connected to the principal hospital through the communication lines. The developed system also provides maximal flexibility on the physical level, allowing ISDN, ADSL, ATM and dedicated lines. This project focuses on the acquisition of medical data, the management of the communications and the visualization and posterior analysis of the data. It also includes a series of multimedia options that facilitate the collaboration during the diagnosis: use of videoconferences following video compression protocols (H.323), collaborative whiteboard (norm T.120), visualization of graphic files related to the patient, transmission of files by means of sockets, etc. The global system follows the IEEE MIB P-1073 standard, which it improves by including the acquisition of analog signals and to which it adds a component of intelligent monitoring using a knowledge based system (alarm check, tendencies analysis, communications control, etc.). The system disposes of an intelligent module (rules based system developed in OPS/R2) charged with management of the communication between the different processes, with the data transmission priorities, the bandwidth management, the management of the charge between various resources, etc.

Framework of a system for the management and assistance in analysis of medical images

Presents the structure of an information system for medical data and images. Thanks to a modular and flexible design, it can be implanted in hospital environments with various kinds of communication infrastructures to high capacity lines. Both its design and combination of small functional modules with a well defined entry/exit interface allows us to implement the functionalities required by the users. A database stores not only the information but also the specialists reports and notes concerning patients and diagnoses. We have incorporated tools that are not found in conventional systems (image segmentation, advanced visualization, etc.) to assist the physicians in analysis of images and which allow us to incorporate new data into the decision-making process. The user accesses the system with all its information and functionalities via a user-friendly Web interface.

Intelligent agents technology applied to tasks control in ICU telesupervision

This work presents a telemedicine system for Intensive Care Units (ICUs). The system provides the real time acquisition and analysis of physiological data of patients, the graphical visualization of these data and their transmission to a central system charged with the collection and control of all the information concerning the patient, including knowledge based systems (KBS) for medical reasoning. For the distribution and control of various processing tasks, requested by the medical KBS or directly by physicians, we have developed a module based on intelligent agents technology that controls and distributes the tasks according to their priority and to the availability of resources between the interconnected computers.

3D visualization module in a telemedicine project

Advances in telemedicine technology have led to intelligent monitoring systems that are capable of helping medical experts in their decision-making process. These systems imply the introduction of a bed-side computer that supervises the patient and collects, stores and visualizes all the information provided by the medical devices in an accessible way. This paper describes the telemedicine system that is currently being developed by our research team for the intelligent telemonitoring of patients at an intensive care unit (ICU). Concretely, the paper focuses on our 3D visualization module, which shows a virtual model of the patient and allows the clinical staff to visualize the patients evolution in a rapid and clear manner.

Traceability in Patient Healthcare through the Integration of RFID Technology in an ICU in a Hospital

Patient safety is a principal concern for health professionals in the care process and it is, therefore, necessary to provide information management systems to each unit of the hospital, capable of tracking patients and medication to reduce the occurrence of adverse events and therefore increase the quality of care received by patients during their stay in hospital. This work presents a tool for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), a key service with special characteristics, which computerises and tracks admissions, care plans, vital monitoring, the prescription and medication administration process for patients in this service. To achieve this, it is essential that innovative and cutting-edge technologies are implemented such as Near Field Communication (NFC) technology which is now being implemented in diverse environments bringing a range of benefits to the tasks for which it is employed.

3D Visualization for system and networks monitoring support

This article describes a systems and networks monitoring system that is based on the Nagios tool and can easily be supervised by its user. The system is Web-managed and equipped with advanced 3D visualization features in Flash format that improve its interaction and allow it to reproduce the real management environment in multiple browsers with acceptable load and response times. Also, anomalies in the systems functioning are more easily detected thanks to the initial processing of the data from the monitoring tools with AI techniques.