A device for automatically measuring and supervising the critical care patient's urine output.
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.
Department of Information and Communications Systems Engineering, University San Pablo CEU, Boadilla del Monte 28668 Madrid, Spain. abraham.otero@usc.es
Abraham
A
Otero
Francisco
F
Palacios
Teodor
T
Akinfiev
Roemi
R
Fernández
D000465:Algorithms; D001002:Anuria / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000534:rehabilitation / Q000652:urine*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D009846:Oliguria / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000534:rehabilitation / Q000652:urine*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016482:Urinalysis / Q000295:instrumentation*; D059349:Urine Specimen Collection / Q000295:instrumentation*