Patient-specific modeling for critical care

Abstract

Decision-making in critical care occurs on a time scale of hours, minutes, or even seconds and requires synthesizing large amounts of patient-specific (PS) data. It is therefore sensible to make use of PS modeling applications in critical care since they offer tools for integrating disparate data into a single system view and leverage computing power to provide decision support information in a timely manner. PS modeling can be used to aid diagnosis, to estimate occult physiological variables, and to test potential therapies in silico before administering them to a patient. They can therefore help clinicians determine what happened to the patient in the past, what is happening in the present, and what will happen in the future.