Neurocritical Care Informatics

Book excerpt: Health care in the twenty-first century requires intensive use of technology in order to acquire and analyze data and manage and disseminate information. No area is more data intensive than the neurointensive care unit. Despite the massive amount of data, however, providers often lack interpretable and actionable information. This book reviews the concepts underlying the emerging field of neurocritical care informatics, with a focus on integrated data acquisition, linear and nonlinear processing, and innovative visualization in the ICU. Subjects addressed in individual chapters are thus wide ranging and encompassing, for example, multimodal and continuous EEG monitoring and data integration, display of data in the ICU, patient-centered clinical decision support, optimization of collaboration and workflow, and progress towards an “integrated medical environment”. All of the nine chapters have been written by international thought leaders in the field.