Improving Alarm Settings (New Research from IMPALA Project)

New IMPALA Research Paper Published! Improving alarm settings and reducing alarm fatigue.
‍

The IMPALA Project Team investigated how to better manage false patient alarms. After analysing data from 772 patients in 2 hospitals in Malawi they developed an algorithm that focused on age-specfic thresholds and incorporated adaptive delays that significantly reduced false alarms while maintaining and even increasing true alarms. Some of the significant results of the study:
‍

• Age-specific thresholds: Using age-specific thresholds significantly reduced alarms for all monitored vital signs: ECGHR (41.14%), ECGRR (17.54%), and SPO2 (54.79%), showing a strong statistical difference compared to normal thresholds (p<0.00001). The drop in number of alarms corresponded to a decrease of hundreds of thousands of alarms.
• Time Delay: A 15 second delay reduced total alarms by 45%.
• Alarm Timing and Duration: More alarms generated in the 1 hour before critical illness events (eg. convulsion, respiratory support, etc.), and alarms had longer duration. This indicated more sensitive alarms to true critical events.
  ‍

At GOAL 3, our mission is to unburden health workers, and this new algorithm is a major step forward in that. Ensuring our monitors have accurate alarm threshold settings saves time for nurses, who now respond to less alarms, and also allows patients with true critical events to get faster attention, improving care and saving lives.
‍

We are super pleased with the results and impact of this research and know that it will have a tremendous impact on healthcare workers and patients. Together, we’re building smarter, more sensitive systems that don’t just alarm, but empower.
‍

Full article was published in the Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing.
‍
The research is funded by EDCTP.