A Low-Cost Physiological Monitoring Interface for Intensive Care Unit

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in 2020, many patients were treated in isolation wards because of the high infectivity and long incubation period of COVID-19. Therefore, monitoring systems have become critical to patient care and to safeguard medical professional safety. Objective: The user interface is very important to the surveillance system; therefore, we use web technology to develop a system that can create an interface based on user needs. When the surveillance scene needs to be changed, the surveillance location can be changed at any time, effectively reducing costs and time required, so that patients can achieve timely and appropriate goals of treatment. Methods: ZigBee was employed to develop a monitoring system for intensive care units (ICUs). Unlike conventional GUIs, the proposed GUI enables monitoring of various aspects of a patient, and the monitoring interface can be modified according to user needs. A simulated ICU environment monitoring system is designed to test the effectiveness of the system. The simulated environment and monitoring nodes were set up at positions consistent with the actual clinical environments to measure the time required to switch between monitoring scenes or targets on the GUI. Results: A low-cost system that can construct ZigBee-simulated graphical monitoring interfaces on demand was proposed in this study. The system can effectively overcome the limitations of conventional design methods for monitoring interfaces. Conclusion: This system can be used to simultaneously monitor the basic physiological data of numerous patients, enabling nursing professionals to instantly determine patient status and provide appropriate treatments. The proposed monitoring system can be applied to remote medical care after official adoption.