SiSPODi: integrando medição, geração e inferência dos perfis de infusão intravenosa

Abstract

Despite advances in computing applied to health, the administration of intravenous drug deliveries still presents important unsolved demands. Intravenous infusions are present when therapeutic actions of greater precision are needed in terms of the delivered drug concentration during the treatment, as well as in terms of the speed to reach the effective therapeutic region. These procedures are among the most common in hospitals and have the potential to generate a high rate of adverse and dangerous events. Despite this, most intravenous infusions are accompanied by checks carried out manually, thus being subject to failures of different natures. In this scenario, the central research problem of this thesis arises: how to automate the monitoring of intravenous drugs delivery profiles? Thus, the objective of this thesis is the design of a system to monitor the delivery of intravenous drugs, to provide an autonomous record of the different medications flows profiles. In this sense, the Intelligent System for Operational Profile Supervision in Intravenous Devices (SiSPODi) was proposed, whose main contributions are: (i) the elaboration of an instrumentation platform for the acquisition of real data of intravenous infusions; (ii) the development of an infusion profile simulator able to generate the full range of medication delivery profiles practiced by intravenous infusion devices; and (iii) the generation of a model to infer the intravenous drug deliveries profiles, exploring Machine Learning techniques. SiSPODi was evaluated through usage scenarios, exploring its different functionalities. The achieved results were promising, showing reliable inferences from the infusion profiles. In addition, the achieved results can support future research in this area, since an important data set on intravenous infusions (measured and simulated) and an intravenous infusion profiles simulator, developed within the scope of this work, are freely available. As will become clear throughout the text, this work has an important innovative potential for a strategic area in public health.