An Audible Display Integrating Patient Monitors

Abstract

Audible alarms in monitors play an important role in providing information during patient monitoring. However an overabundance of separately informative alarm sounds produces unpleasant noise and becomes a nuisance to medical personnel. Consequently, a new approach to alarm sounds has to be taken, which is both informative and not annoying, even in a chorus of different monitoring systems. In order to research this question, we demonstrate here an interface, which is able to present choosable audible outputs from a set of commercially available monitors. As proof of principle, we connect a capnograph and a cerebral oximeter to a smart phone embedded processor in order to display EtCO2 and rSO2 values, respectively in an audible form. The output is frequency coded into distinct harmonies, with optimal sound synthesis to be researched in the future.