Ambient Intelligence in Postoperative Critical Care: First Observations of a Novel Monitoring Approach

Background: Clinical decision making in acute care is a complex process, especially in demanding environments such as operating theaters or intensive care units. In principal, three sources serve as the information basis for clinical decision making: (1) the electronic health and medical record, (2) the primary measured vital values at bedside, and (3) the subjective review and judgment of the caring physician. Decision making based on this information sources thus lags reproducibility, precision and does not scale in both temporal and capacitive dimensions. Our aim is to establish a novel paradigm of real-time clinical phenotype-monitoring that addresses the aforementioned shortcomings.