Challenges and Recommendations for Implementing a Novel Patient Monitoring System for Emergency Departments

The information system landscape in Emergency Departments is almost as diverse as the patients treated there. Clinicians and management rely heavily on having access to timely and accurate information about arriving and admitted patients. Implementing and evaluating novel research-based systems in such settings will inevitably face several challenges. Any information technology implementation project faces the generic challenge of designing a system that addresses the actual problem in a manner acceptable for the end-users. Additionally, several contextual challenges emerge that are specific to the targeted domain. In this paper, we present our approach to the design and implementation of a novel system and the experiences gained along the way. We provide recommendations for challenges relating to external and internal issues and operational perspectives, namely: 1) Coupling streams of data from disconnected systems, 2) Coping with insufficient vendor APIs, 3) Sensible interaction with external systems, 4) Dealing with the intermittent nature of medical device utilization, 5) Capturing data from disconnected devices, 6) Enabling washout handling to support study design, and 7) Monitoring the deployed system during operation.