Hospital Monitoring System

SE442 - 20112

Description

Red Brick General (RBG) Hospital is upgrading their system to monitor patient vital signs - heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, body temperature, etc. Measurement data is acquired using sensor equipment attached to the patient and transmitted over a network interface to a bedside monitor. Data is transmitted from the sensor as a raw percentage (0-100) and then scaled to the actual measurement based on configurable limits used when defining the type of vital sign being collected. Data is displayed locally at the bedside monitor and at a central monitor located in the floor’s nursing station. The nurse’s station displays the current vital sign measurement and a trend of data over a configurable time period and rate (i.e. – last 10 minutes, 2 second updates). Each nursing station is typically responsible for ten beds, but during times of high occupancy the hospital would like the ability to increase that limit by assigning additional beds.

Each of the vital sign measurements has configurable limits (based on the type of patient) that generate alarms to the nursing station. Nurses acknowledge the vital sign alarm and then go to the patient’s room to reset the monitoring device. Patients also have a call button that is used to alert the nursing station. Nurses acknowledge the call button by going to the patient’s room and resetting the call request.

The system must be able to record the history of a patient while in the hospital. History includes the storage and retrieval of vital sign alarm and acknowledgements. Statistics are also maintained for the number of alarms and call button requests along with the response time for acknowledgements. Simple reports can be requested from the nurse’s station to retrieve historical data.

 

Summary of high-level functions required:

  1. Admit and discharge patients to/from beds using a patient name and ID.
  2. Collect vital sign measurements from a patient sensor interface. Data is transmitted to the monitoring device at rate in milliseconds entered when configuring the type of vital sign being measured.
  3. Generate alarms based on configurable limits for each vital sign type. Each vital sign will have a lower and upper limit. Patient status alarms are triggered when a patient's vital sign is outside its safe range.
  4. Maintain a trend of each patient’s vital signs over a configurable time range and rate. An example would be to maintain the patient’s high-high (critical), high, low, low-low (critical) and temperature over the past 8 hours sampled at a rate of every 3 minutes. A trend (displayed as a line graph) would show sampled readings over that time period.
  5. There is a “black-box” diagnostic mode in addition to optional trending that dumps all patient vital sign measurements for a given time limit to persistent storage when a critical alarm limit is tripped. The range of data collected would span a configurable time in minutes before and after a critical alarm was generated.
  6. Maintain a long term history of patient vital sign alarms, configuration changes and all actions taken by the staff – alarm acknowledgements, resets and call button responses.

 

External User Interfaces:

Bedside Monitor

·         Digital readout of current measurement for each vital sign

·         Ability to configure new sensor readings (scaling of raw data)

·         Interface for setting alarm ranges of each vital sign

·         Interface for enabling/disabling each measurement

·         Interface to simulate a patient call button (causes notification at nurse’s station).

·         Call button reset interface.

·         Alarm reset interface

Nurse Station Monitor

·         Digital readout of current measurement for each vital sign.

·         Alarm notification and acknowledgement interface for patient vital sign alarms.

·         Configuration and display of patient trend data.

·         Interface for admitting/discharging patients

 

Project Deliverables (see course schedule for due dates)

1.     Design document including the following:

a.     Use case scenarios. No need to supply admitting/discharging and configuration use cases.

b.    System context diagram – identifying external actors and devices.

c.     Collaboration diagrams for each use case -normal scenarios only.

d.    Subsystem identification and rational – categorize subsystem.

e.     Consolidated collaboration diagrams for each subsystem.

f.     Task architecture – categorize clustering of tasks where appropriate.

g.    Deployment diagram showing components and interfaces

2.     Implementation / Testing – There is no expectation to build and test the complete monitoring system given the time frame we are working in. I would expect:

a.     A test plan that discussed the challenges involved in testing a system of this nature and a strategy for performing the testing. For example how could actual vital sign measurements and alarm conditions be generated? As with the Chat application, consider those non-functional requirements for which data needs to be collected and analyzed. What are the stress points of your design? What is the limit of beds a nursing station can monitor?

b.    A reasonable implementation of the bedside monitoring device – working GUI implementation.

c.     A prototype of the nurse’s station that demonstrates the receiving and acknowledgment of patient alarms – no fancy GUI implementation is required.

 

Grading Guidelines (100 points max)

·         Design Documentation (see Deliverables above) – 40 points max

                                                  i.    Phase I ( 20 pts)

·         Use Cases

·         System Context Diagram

·         Collaboration Diagram for each Use Case

                                                 ii.    Phase II ( 20 pts)

·         Subsystem Identification

·         Consolidated Collaboration Diagram for each Subsystem

·         Task architecture

·         Deployment diagram

·         Implementation ( 30 points max ) :

                                                  i.    Bedside monitor prototype & GUI ( 10 points max)

                                                 ii.    Nursing station prototype with GUI ( 10 points max )

                                                iii.    Nursing station prototype without GUI ( 10 points max)

·         Testing ( 20 points max ) :

                                                  i.    Test strategy and test cases documented ( 10 points max )

                                                 ii.    Remote testing ( 4 points )

                                                iii.    Analysis of test case results ( 6 points max)

·         Presentation ( 10 points max ):

                                                  i.    Presentation with no demo ( 4 points  max)

                                                 ii.    Presentation with demo of  just bedside monitor ( 3 points max )

                                                iii.    Presentation with demo of bedside monitor and nurse’s station (3 points max )