Articles: critical-care.
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Intensive Medicine is always associated with the problem of handling the mass and assuring the quality of information on vital signs, fluid and blood balance, laboratory data, physiological calculations, etc., required in patient care. A computer based monitoring system for intensive care was introduced in 1973 at the Academic Hospital in Leuven. The basic software was developed at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital of the Harvard Medical School and the medical division of the Hewlett Packard Company; the computer used was a H. ⋯ G.-analysis is being developed. The same computer serves the remotely located medical and coronary care units and one bed in the emergency department. An assessment of computer assistance in intensive therapy, on nursing labor and on quality of patient care is made.
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One of the major developments in health care has been the evolution of critical-care medicine. This concept* encompasses total care of patients from the initiation of an illness or injury, through all their sophisticated care, until the patient has either recovered or succumbed. The concept of critical-care medicine has actually evolved only over the past decade. ⋯ A multidisciplinary unit is described as one of four alternative approaches. Participants in such planning for this area of patient care must include physicians, nurses and technologists, architects, biomedical and clinical engineers, biomedical technologists, and all hospital department heads who might not necessarily be directly involved in this kind of patient care, but who do, in fact, participate in some fashion. Our obligation is obvious, and the need to familiarize all involved with this concept of patient care and its urgency are discussed.