The DePPaRT Waveform Viewer
Part of the DePPaRT study involves a detailed analysis of continuous waveforms collected just prior to, during, and after the dying process of critically ill patients who undergo withdrawal of life sustaining therapy in the intensive care unit. We will be collecting continuous arterial blood pressure (ART), heart activity (ECG), and oxygen saturation (PLETH) data from all enrolled patients, and looking at each waveform in detail to assess when activity stops, and whether it appears to resume or not after the declaration of death.
During the pilot study we used manual printouts of waveform data to assess this critical study outcome. For the collection of four continuous waveforms, this sometimes resulted in hundreds of pages of printouts for adjudicators to flip through. It was impractical to share waveform data between investigators for adjudication and comparison purposes, and comparison of waveforms was difficult. In short, collection of paper printouts for the 500 patients we hope to enrol in DePPaRT would have been impractical and infeasible!
Enter Dr. Nathan Scales, our hardworking, personable, and innovative bioengineer. Working with a team of engineers and researchers at the Dynamical Analysis Laboratory (DAL) at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Nathan has developed a waveform viewer that seamlessly integrates patient waveform data stored on our DePPaRT server.
The software has controls that allow adjudicators viewing the data to easily manipulate the scale, switch between waveforms, zoom in on particular areas of interest, or select specific time points from plots of the numerics. There are also built-in place markers, which will allow adjudicators to clearly indicate when they perceive events of interest to occur, such as cessation and resumption of a pulse. Because Nathan has developed the software himself he has been able to modify and add to it while we continue to test its ease of use for the analysis of real patient data. The DePPaRT waveform viewer will be pilot tested by a group of independent adjudicators before its use for analysis of the DePPaRT waveform data.
The DePPaRT team is thrilled to have Nathan on board and we are looking forward to the new possibilities that online waveform analysis can provide.
During the pilot study we used manual printouts of waveform data to assess this critical study outcome. For the collection of four continuous waveforms, this sometimes resulted in hundreds of pages of printouts for adjudicators to flip through. It was impractical to share waveform data between investigators for adjudication and comparison purposes, and comparison of waveforms was difficult. In short, collection of paper printouts for the 500 patients we hope to enrol in DePPaRT would have been impractical and infeasible!
Enter Dr. Nathan Scales, our hardworking, personable, and innovative bioengineer. Working with a team of engineers and researchers at the Dynamical Analysis Laboratory (DAL) at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Nathan has developed a waveform viewer that seamlessly integrates patient waveform data stored on our DePPaRT server.
The software has controls that allow adjudicators viewing the data to easily manipulate the scale, switch between waveforms, zoom in on particular areas of interest, or select specific time points from plots of the numerics. There are also built-in place markers, which will allow adjudicators to clearly indicate when they perceive events of interest to occur, such as cessation and resumption of a pulse. Because Nathan has developed the software himself he has been able to modify and add to it while we continue to test its ease of use for the analysis of real patient data. The DePPaRT waveform viewer will be pilot tested by a group of independent adjudicators before its use for analysis of the DePPaRT waveform data.
The DePPaRT team is thrilled to have Nathan on board and we are looking forward to the new possibilities that online waveform analysis can provide.