Big Data makes intensive care better

Patient safety in intensive care units could be significantly improved if false alarms could be greatly reduced and critical complications such as epileptic seizures could be predicted. This is where the "ICU Cockpit" project of the National Research Programme "Big Data" (NRP 75) comes in: The large amounts of data from intensive care medicine will be used to develop procedures for early warning systems and therapeutic recommendations. One single critically ill patient treated in an intensive care or emergency unit generates up to 100 GB of data per day. The data comes from patient monitoring, but also from examinations such as computer and magnetic resonance tomography of the brain, laboratory results and biosensors. It is often not possible to use the flood of information to identify risk situations and to make quick decisions. Fewer false alarms - better patient safety. Conventional monitoring systems trigger around 700 alarms per patient per day, i.e. around one alarm every two minutes.