Experiences with an end-to-end wireless clinical monitoring system

Wireless sensor networks can play an important role in improving patient care by collecting continuous vital signs for clinical decision support. This paper presents the architecture of, and our experiences with, a large-scale wireless clinical monitoring system. Our system encompasses portable wireless pulse oximeters, a wireless relay network spanning multiple hospital floors, and integration into the hospital Electronic Medical Record (EMR) databases. We report our experience and lessons learned from a 14-month clinical trial of the system in six hospital wards of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Our experiences show the feasibility of achieving reliable vital sign collection, using a wireless sensor network integrated with hospital IT infrastructure and procedures. We highlight technical and non-technical elements that pose challenges in a real-world hospital environment and provide guidelines for successful and efficient deployment of similar systems.