Example of Research: Smart Life Support
The "Smart Life Support" research project is intended to develop intelligent life-support systems for use in intensive care units. Improvements in medical care and an ageing patient population at the same time lead to increasingly difficult disease progressions that require maximum attention from medical staff. Mastering the associated, growing complexity of patient care requires increasing support from the equipment. As a consequence, such assistance systems must possess local intelligence and medical knowledge on an unprecedented scale and assume partial function of therapy.
The ideal technical support of organ and vital functions plays an outstanding role, especially the support of the heart and lungs, which is also reflected in the Federal Statistical Office's mortality figures. For example, in 2007 more than 75% of the deceased fell victim to these two organ systems. This project was a collaborative project funded by the DFG (PAK 183). A total of six chairs of RWTH Aachen University is involved.
Further information can be found on the website of the Chair of Medical Information Technology.