A silent patient monitor for the Intensive Care Unit to reduce the post traumatic stress disorder

Over for half a year, the concept of the Ultimo was developed into a working prototype. The Ultimo is part of a bigger project that has been started by the Critical Alarms Lab. Critical alarms lab is working with various hospitals, including Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

The silent ICU aims to reduce stress and anxiety in intensive care. It aims to create a calm place for patients to recover, allows visitors to feel less anxious about their loved ones and improves the clinicians work environment. The Ultimo adjusts the patient monitor inside each patient room based on who is inside the room.

The Ultimo’s biggest challenge was to cater to the different users. Clinicians and visitors enter a patient box multiple times a day, and both have different needs in terms of what is displayed on the screen. To overcome this challenge, the system keeps track of who is in the room and changes the monitor accordingly.

Product Experience map – Current

Product Experience map – Future

The concept of Ultimo comes from a vision of Silent ICU where the
patient experiences a peaceful recovery, and visitors feel less anxious about the monitor and nurses work in a calm workspace without alarm fatigue.

Ultimo works as a system involving five different devices; camera, beacon, the sensor unit, PC and monitor screen. The sensor unit collects the patient data from sensors. The camera and Bluetooth beacons receive the data of people going in and out. This data is processed in a PC and displayed over a monitor screen. The camera helps to count the people, whereas the PC identifies clinicians by the beacons placed on their identity card. This data enables the Ultimo to see when a patient is alone in the room so that the monitor can be set to the silent patient mode.

The decision on which screen to show is based on input data from camera and beacons. All logic used in the code can be divided into three parts; detection, identification, and triggering the display.

This project proved that the vision of a silent ICU is not just wishful thinking, but feasible with plenty of stepping stones to complete integration. The foundation of a smart monitor has been made with the development of Ultimo.