System and method for facilitating clinical decision making

摘要

Disclosed is a system and method for providing information to the user of a medical monitoring or diagnostic device to aid in the clinical decision making process. The preferred embodiment uses two estimators or predictors of the same physiological quantity, with each of the estimators being designed to detect specific states or artifacts in the estimated parameter and thus operating at a different point on its respective ROC curve; one chosen to provide high sensitivity, the other chosen to provide high specificity. The divergence between the estimators is indicated by the use of a shaded region between their respective time trends. The use of 2 estimators of the same parameters with different performance characteristics allows the system and method of the present invention to derive additional information about the underlying physiologic process over and above that which would be available from a single estimator. The system and method of the present invention can derive information from not only the instantaneous values of the estimators and the difference between them, but also from the time trend of the difference.