The effect of technical filtering and clinical criteria on alert rates from continuous vital sign monitoring in the general ward.

OBJECTIVES: Continuous vital sign monitoring at the general hospital ward has major potential advantages over intermittent monitoring but generates many alerts with risk of alert fatigue. We hypothesized that the number of alerts would be decreased using different filters.

METHODS: This study was an exploratory analysis of the alert reducing effect from adding two different filters to continuously collected vital sign data (peripheral oxygen saturation, blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate) in patients admitted after major surgery or severe medical disease. Filtered data were compared to data without artifact removal. Filter one consisted of artifact removal, filter two consisted of artifact removal plus duration criteria adjusted for severity of vital sign deviation. Alert thresholds were based on National Early Warning Score (NEWS) threshold.

RESULTS: A population of 716 patients admitted for severe medical disease or major surgery with continous wireless vital sign monitoring at the generel ward with a mean monitoring time of 75.8 hours, were included for the analysis. Without artifact removal we found a median of 137 [IQR: 87-188] alerts per patient/day, artifact removal resulted in a median of 101 [IQR: 56-160] alerts per patient/day and with artifact removal combined with a duration-severity criterion we found a median of 19 [IQR: 9-34] alerts per patient/day. Reduction of alerts was 86.4% ( p  < 0.001) for values without artifact removal (137 alerts) vs. the duration criteria and a reduction (19 alerts) of 81.5% ( p  < 0.001) for the criteria with artifact removal (101 alerts) vs. the duration criteria (19 alerts).

CONCLUSION: We conclude that a combination of artifact removal and duration-severity criteria approach substantially reduces alerts generated by continuous vital sign monitoring.