Data acquisition for an intelligent bedside monitoring system

The authors have developed a software architecture for intelligent monitoring tasks at the bedside in critical care environments (SIMON). This architecture includes a data acquisition module. The authors have modeled their design of this component on the concepts proposed by the IEEE P1073 standardization committee. It should be seen as a bridge towards an environment based on that standard. The authors have designed their system to be able to acquire all data available from all bedside instruments to allow signal analysis at the lowest level. The authors are using SIMON on-line in the Cardiac Care Unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.