Vanderbilt University Medical Center devises a solution for ICU sufferers to digitally filter out medical alarms

As hospital intensive care units (ICU) grapple with the issue of noise pollution from medical device alarms, a research team at the institute of Vanderbilt University Medical Center has devised a solution to shield sufferers’ ears from the oppressive sounds and to develop a care environment that is more conducive to healing.

While the noise from medical device alarms has become a huge distraction for clinicians in ICUs, it also takes a toll on sufferers who are similarly bombarded with a constant barrage of alarms—most of which are false or not clinically actionable.

However, auditory medical alarms are “loud, annoying and shrill” for providers, at the similar time they pose potential hazards for patient recovery, in accordance with the Joseph Schlesinger, MD, assistant professor of anesthesia in the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

These alarms can have negative consequences for sufferers in the ICU, says Schlesinger, involving disruption of sleep as well as contributing to psychological conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and delirium. “My approach to this was why we can’t take alarms out of the patient experience?” he adds. “Why not prevent letting patients suffer?”

To address the issue, Schlesinger’s team has established an in-ear device worn by sufferers that eliminates alarm sounds by digitally filtering sound waves while preserving their capability to hear human speech. The device has been tested in a simulated ICU environment, with results indicating clinical and statistical improvement in alarm filtering.

A paper presented last week at the 2017 International Conference on Auditory Display asserts that the device “enables sufferers to hear everything occurring around them and to communicate effectively without experiencing the negative consequences of audible alarms.”

Schlesinger points out that headphones or earplugs that block all environmental noise completely wouldn’t have been a workable solution because patients require hearing clinicians’ voices. He says a deficiency of stimulation of the auditory sense can also contribute to PTSD and delirium, so that would be counterproductive as well.

“We needed to make certain that sufferers in the hospital could communicate, not just have earplugs,” adds Schlesinger. “We wanted to make sure speech comprehension was not harmed.”

His team’s solution is a wearable device that in real time silences the frequencies corresponding to alarm noises—significantly patient monitor or red/crisis alarms—by leveraging Raspberry Pi single-board computers and digital filters, while not muffling or distorting any normal atmospheric sounds.

“This was actually a proof-of-concept to see if it could be done,” he summarizes. Ultimately, Schlesinger envisions the effort leading to the development of devices that are “comfortable, affordable and reusable—because if you had to purchase one for every patient, that could get prohibitively costly.”