ABERDEEN POLYGONS - COMPUTER DISPLAYS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PROFILES FOR INTENSIVE-CARE

The clinician in an intensive therapy unit is presented regularly with a range of information about the current physiological state of the p atients under care. This information typically comes from a variety of sources and in a variety of formats. A more integrated form of displa y incorporating several physiological parameters may be helpful theref ore. Three experiments are reported that explored the potential use of analogue, polygon diagrams to display physiological data from patient s undergoing intensive therapy. Experiment 1 demonstrated that informa tion can be extracted readily from such diagrams comprising 8- or 10-s ided polygons, but with an advantage for simpler polygons and for info rmation displayed at the top of the diagram. Experiment 2 showed that colour coding removed these biases for simpler polygons and the top of the diagram, together with speeding the processing time. Experiment 3 used polygons displaying patterns of physiological data that were con sistent with typical conditions observed in the intensive care unit. I t was found that physicians can readily learn to recognize these patte rns and to diagnose both the nature and severity of the patient's phys iological state. These polygon diagrams appear to have some considerab le potential for use in providing on-line summary information of a pat ient's physiological state.