Essential feature of the intensiv care is monitoring of patients whose states require a close-knit control of vital body functions. With increasing development of biosensorics and related monitoring options the frequency of acoustically and visual alarms increases on the intensiv station.  Since every alarm can be caused by a critical situation or a technical problem it must be acknowledged by a intensiv caregiver or a doctor. The noise exposure and frequent interruptions of the work process put too much of the extra load and lead to cogestive stress and in the medium term to a patient’s dangerous desensitization of professional nurses for alarms (“Alarm fatigue”). This can lead to the ignoring of alarms or to a patient’s hazardous setting at the control monitors. The consequence of these effects are regular treatment failure with potential patients damage. Each critical situation and especially each patient damage leads to considerable mental stress of the staff and often affected doctors withdraw from their career.

The "AlarmRedux" project aims to improve alarm management in intensive care. To this end, methodological and technical concepts are being developed in order to reduce the workload and cognitive load of the clinical personnel by means of alarms in a measurable and sustainable manner. The aim of the group Interactive Systems in Healthcare is to develop new forms of alarm distribution and signalling interaction, e. g. via portable, multimodal devices that allow different levels of attention to be addressed by the user.

Human Centered Design
Human Computer Interfaces
Wearable Computing
Multimodal Information Presentation