A Device for Automatically Measuring and Supervising the Critical Care Patient’S Urine Output

Sensors

Abraham Otero²  Francisco Palacios³  Teodor Akinfiev¹ 

[1] Automatic Control Department, IAI/CSIC-Industrial Automation Institute, Spanish Council for Scientific Research, La Poveda, Arganda del Rey, 28500 Madrid, Spain; E-Mails:;Department of Information and Communications Systems Engineering, University San Pablo CEU, Boadilla del Monte 28668 Madrid, Spain;Critical Care Unit, University Hospital of Getafe, Getafe, Carretera Toledo KM 12.500, 28901 Madrid, Spain; E-Mail:

关键词: biosensors;    patient monitoring;    urine output;    intelligent alarms;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s100100934

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Critical care units are equipped with commercial monitoring devices capable of sensing patients’ physiological parameters and supervising the achievement of the established therapeutic goals. This avoids human errors in this task and considerably decreases the workload of the healthcare staff. However, at present there still is a very relevant physiological parameter that is measured and supervised manually by the critical care units’ healthcare staff: urine output. This paper presents a patent-pending device capable of automatically recording and supervising the urine output of a critical care patient. A high precision scale is used to measure the weight of a commercial urine meter. On the scale’s pan there is a support frame made up of Bosch profiles that isolates the scale from force transmission from the patient’s bed, and guarantees that the urine flows properly through the urine meter input tube. The scale’s readings are sent to a PC via Bluetooth where an application supervises the achievement of the therapeutic goals. The device is currently undergoing tests at a research unit associated with the University Hospital of Getafe in Spain.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
©2010 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.