Guardian: an experimental system for intelligent ICU monitoring.

We are developing an intelligent agent for patient monitoring named Guardian. It is applied to the post-operative monitoring and therapy management of cardiac surgery patients. Even though Guardian is an experimental system so far, we anticipate that in the short term it will be integrated with existing ICU information systems and critically evaluated on simulated patient cases. In evaluating the system, we aim to demonstrate that human-machine cooperation in information overload situations can improve the work environment of clinicians, improve health care delivery, and ultimately reduce health-care costs.