Introduction

Critical care is a highly technical environment that has greatly benefited from advances in computer technology such as accurate monitoring with automated pattern recognition and alarms, or algorithm-driven ventilators. Integrating and organizing the vast amount of information related to a specific patient is a daily challenge for the critical care doctor. Medical records are notorious for their illegible handwriting, errors, omissions and dispersion of information resulting in an incomplete representation for the caregiver. Incomplete information can lead to delayed, duplicate or erroneous medical treatment. Nurses and others caregivers spend a lot of time collecting and organizing all relevant information so that it can be comprehensively appraised and acted on.

It has long been recognized that computers may help to organize and render information in critical care but it is only since the start of the 21st century that units have started to systematically equip themselves. This increase can be attributed to the awareness that Clinical Information Systems (CIS) can improve efficiency while simultaneously improving patient outcome, and may reduce staff workload. As a result, the work area at the bedside is changing: paper charts are being replaced by computers running sophisticated software. Physicians no longer prescribe on paper, but send their prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy; nurses validate the patient's vital signs in the computer and receive notification that new laboratory results have become available. Radiographs are no longer hunted for, but are presented at the bedside monitor.