New monitoring approach for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Luca Piccini, Giuseppe Andreoni, O. Ciani, E. Grönvall, P. Marti · Virtual Community of Pathological Anatomy (University of Castilla La Mancha) · 2008
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) represents a complex and multi-in/output context aimed at monitoring and controlling biological signals and parameters in premature newborns. This paper details some methodological and design options for developing technologies that allow end-user composition and control through new approaches that integrate wearable monitoring, pervasive and unobtrusive computing research that already are introducing new perspectives in a wide range of applications. These options enhance biosignals monitoring capabilities and provide consistent user experiences in environments where different devices, services and processes typically co-exist. In particular we describe the notion of assemblies of monitoring devices, interpreted as the combination of sensors, tools and services in a distributed monitoring environment where they interact. We report on the importance of flexibility and user control in the use of such technological assemblies in a NICU, describing a prototype and preliminary results of such monitoring system.