Increasing vigilance on the medical/surgical floor to improve patient safety.

Aim: This paper reports a study designed to assess an automated non-invasive, patient vigilance system, the (L)G(1TM) system, for determining heart rate and respiration rate. The study uses collected data to optimize the (L)G(1TM)'s alert management scheme for medical/surgical wards.

Background: Thousands of patients die unnecessarily each year because of compromised patient safety in hospitals.