A new mathematical treatment of alarms that considers them as multi-variable interactions between process variables has provided the first-ever method to calculate values for alarm limits. This has resulted in substantial reductions in false alarms and hence in alarm annunciation rates in field trials. It has also unified alarm management, process control and product quality control into a sing...

To analyse the effects of apnoea and bradycardia on the oxygen saturation (SaO2) of preterm infants and to make recommendations for apnoea alarm limits, polygraphic recordings were made on 89 occasions of 27 preterm infants; 1029 apnoeic episodes were analysed. Reduction in SaO2 was positively correlated with duration of apnoea, but the scatter of results was such that reductions in SaO2 of up ...

Statistical process control (SPC) for injection molding typically consists of setting alarm limits on a few important molding variables for real-time part containment. A new multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) method is presented that utilizes the measurement of process variable relationships to achieve a more robust quality control system. This approach not only detects process out...

False alarm is one of the main concerns in intensive care units and can result in care disruption, sleep deprivation, and insensitivity of care-givers to alarms. Several methods have been proposed to suppress the false alarm rate through improving the quality of physiological signals by filtering, and developing more accurate sensors. However, significant intrinsic correlation among the extract...

T he most widely extended approach for automatically detecting anomalous behavior in space operations is the use of out-of-limits (OOL) alarms. The OOL approach consists of defining an upper and lower threshold so that when a measurement goes above the upper limit or below the lower one, an alarm is triggered. Then engineers will inspect the parameter that is out of limits and determine whether...

BACKGROUND Heart rate (HR) alarms are prevalent in ICU, and these parameters are configurable. Not much is known about nursing behavior associated with tailoring HR alarm parameters to individual patients to reduce clinical alarm fatigue. OBJECTIVES To understand the relationship between heart rate (HR) alarms and adjustments to reduce unnecessary heart rate alarms. METHODS Retrospective, q...

OBJECTIVES Strategies for oxygen therapy for preterm infants, such as the Vermont-Oxford's 'Breathsavers' guidelines, seek to strike a balance between the potential risks of the extremes of hyperoxia and hypoxia in preterm infants. Using an algorithm based on those guidelines, we aimed to compare the proportion of time spent within the SpO2 target range during algorithm-based management of oxyg...

Large enterprises frequently enforce accounting limits to reduce the impact of fraud. As a complement to accounting limits, auditors use Benford analysis to detect traces of undesirable or illegal activities in accounting data. Unfortunately, the two fraud fighting measures often do not work well together. Accounting limits may significantly disturb the digit distribution examined by Benford an...

BACKGROUND This study seeks to increase clinical operational efficiency and accelerator beam consistency by retrospectively investigating the application of statistical process control (SPC) to linear accelerator beam steering parameters to determine the utility of such a methodology in detecting changes prior to equipment failure (interlocks actuated). METHODS Steering coil currents (SCC) fo...