An open source toolkit for managing patient monitoring device alarms based on the IHE Alarm Communication Management profile

The "Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise" (IHE) initiative has defined an Alarm Communication Management (ACM) profile as part of the Patient Care Device (PCD) domain in order to communicate alarms from patient monitoring and therapeutic devices in a consistent way. We developed and implemented an extensible, open source toolkit (C#) based on the ACM profile and interfaced our patient monitoring equipment and infusion pumps using several export interfaces available in the intensive care units of the Erasmus Medical Center. The result was, an open source framework of the IHE PCD ACM profile which provides a starting point for a centralized, uniformed approach to device alarm management. In the future devices could use alarms generated by other devices to decrease the number of false alarms. The toolkit is available at: http://i-put.sourceforge.net.