Open Source Patient Data Management System for Intensive Care

Abstract

In Intensive Care Units, the amount of data to be processed for patients care, the turn over of the patients, the necessity for reliability and for review processes indicate the use of Patient Data Management System (PDMS). To respond to the needs of a Surgical Intensive Care Unit, we developed a PDMS based on open source software and components. The software was designed as a client-server architecture running on the Linux operating system and powered by the PostgreSQl data base system. The client software was developed in C. The application offers the following functions: medical notes captures, observations and treatments, nursing charts with administration of medications and scoring systems functionalities. The PDMS was used to care more than two thousands patients with the expected reliability and functionalities.