System for Estimation of Patient's State - Discussion of the Approach

This chapter presents work on a diagnosis support system with continuous estimation of a sudden cardiac arrest risk. The concept is based on the analysis of the signals received on line from a medical monitor, possibly augmented by clinical data. The need for such solution is motivated and existing approaches towards quantitative estimation of patient’s health are examined. An overview of the system and its building blocks are presented, which allows to define the requirements for the hardware platform and operating system. A discussion follows, explaining the choice made. The design of communication path between the medical monitor decided upon and the discussed system is explained. The prototyping microprocessor board being used is presented, together with detailed description of steps which lead to the development of a fully-featured Linux distribution for this board.