Experience With a Digital Computer for Study and Improved Management of the Critically Ill

Automated techniques, now bolstered by the availability of a computer, have become increasingly important in recent years as medicine seeks to fulfill the need for ever more comprehensive and technically complex services. Detailed analysis of physiological data by manual methods is inefficient, both for clinical research and for practical use at the bedside. A combination of sensors, with analysis of their output by an on-line computer, offers a means of achieving a comprehensive inventory of patient condition for immediate use by the physician and the clinical investigator. Automated measurement and collection of biological data in a clinical setting has been used in a number of areas.¹,²Automated analog devices have been developed for measuring blood pressure by the use of indirect auscultatory techniques.³⁻⁶These devices are not entirely satisfactory for patients in shock, however, since the indirectly obtained blood pressure loses accuracy under conditions of markedly reduced blood