ABSTRACT
Treating patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) isolation room is full of challenges for the caregivers and the patients. While this is known for years, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted these challenges as if under a burning glass – intensified by a high number of patients at the same time. The risk of infection for the caregivers is very high inside the isolation room and the time spent for putting on and taking off personal protective equipment (PPE) is enormous. Thus, every treatment that can be performed from the anteroom of the isolation room at the same quality level as if being inside the isolation room is a potential building block for solving the challenges. However, data like vital signs have to be provided to the anteroom, alarms have to be transferred to the right caregiver at the right place, and controlling medical device parameters from the anteroom are prerequisites. The new IEEE 11073 Service-oriented Device Connectivity (SDC) series of standards is a key technology to realize this. Therefore, this paper presents an example implementation of IEEE 11073 SDC-based ICU isolation rooms by means of a demonstrator. Such systems can significantly reduce the amount of time the caregivers have to spend in the isolation room and reduce the number of clothing (PPE) changes while providing care at a level of a non-isolation room. As a midterm goal these are steps for the vision of a “silent/quiet ICU”. © 2022 The Author(s), published by De Gruyter.