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Control Tower
This is a system designed for quality control in Health Services. It enables a medical supervisor (i.e. Clinic Director) to view at a glance the fluctuation of many vital parameters over a period of days or weeks, concerning large number of patients.
No sophisticated graphs or reading numbers is required. Just watching colors, that is why reading is fast.
Every screen is divided into squares like a chess board. Every square corresponds to a patient (patient-square) and is further divided into a number of rows, each corresponding to one vital parameter, and a number of columns, each corresponding to a single day.
This
image demonstrates a square showing the fluctuation of 19 parameters (pulse,
SBP, DBP, temp, RR, SpO2, Ht, WBC, Gran, Glucose, BUN, Cr, K, Na, GCS
etc.) over a period of 21days (3 weeks). However, only the last 16 columns
have data, as the patient was admitted 16 days ago.
It is now clear that every patient-square is made up of tiny squares (value-squares) each representing the value of a parameter in a particular day. If the parameter has a value on this particular day, the value-square gets a color: Green for normal, Orange for slightly above normal, Red for much above normal, Blue for slightly below normal and Black for very low values.
Again referring to the above example, this 94-year old woman, is in a comatose condition (GCS value-squares are constantly blue) and she is diabetic (Glucose value-squares are red in all measurments). BUN and Cr levels are elevated, probably reflecting impaired renal function due to DM and/or insufficient hydration. SpO2 was abnormal but tends to normalize within the last few days. Ht was normal in the first measurment and then dropped to lower values, possibly reflecting false initial normal value due to dehydration. The patient has severe infection (red values for WBC) and she is febrile (red for Temp). Tachycardia is probably related to the fever.
It is obvious that we are dealing with a severely ill elderly patient. Apart from SpO2 improvement, we can hardly recognize any other indication of improvement despite the 16-day treatment. Probably change of treatment must be considered. However, the supervisor is instantaneously alerted by the fact that no lab tests have been performed over the last 6 days in such a seriously ill patient! The possibility of medical neglect should be examined.
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No more than a second is needed for the supervisor's attention to focus on such a patient.
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In less than another 5 seconds he gets all this information!
In this way a supervisor can sort at a glance:
- New patients whose condition is still unstable and need a lot of attention.
- Stable patients with a smooth course.
- Patients who suddently deteriorated.