VM

VM monitors the condition of postsurgical patients in an intensive care environment. VM maintains a set of patient-specific expectations and goals for future evaluation.

The system examines the patient history and type of surgery to establish ranges of expected behavior. It identifies an alarm condition if these ranges are exceeded and suggests corrective actions. It is expectation driven and uses the current and past patient history to establish guidelines for patient measurements. The guidelines are used to dynamically establish upper and lower limits for comparison with each new measurement from the monitoring system.It responds with suggestions to clinicians and periodic summaries.

While based on the MYCIN architecture, VM was redesigned to allow for the description of events that change over time. Thus, it can monitor the progress of a patient, interpret data in the context of the patient's present and past condition, and suggest adjustments to therapy. VM is rule based and uses forward chaining, It checks that information previously acquired is still valid for making conclusions, and cycles through the rule set each time new information is available. VM is implemented in LISP and was developed at Stanford University. (1977-1981)

Fagan, L., Ventilator manager: A program to provide on-line consultative advice in the intensive care unit, Report HPP-78-16, Computer Science Dept., Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., Sept. 1978,