Wearable monitors on babies: Big data saving little people

Today 8% of Canadian babies are born premature and internationally the average is 10% These early births, are responsible for three quarters of all infant deaths in Canada. Premature infants together with ill term infants are cared for in Neonatal Intensive Care U nits (NICUs) internationally contain state of th e art medical equipment to monitor and provide life support, resulting in a significant Big Data environment. In addition, graduates of neonatal intensive care may be discharged with medical devices to support continued monitoring as ambulatory patients in and outside the ho me setting. In both NICU and ambulatory contexts wearable patient monitoring has many social implications. This research presents an assessment of the social implications of Big Data solutions for criti cal care within the context of the Artemis project that is enabling Big Data solutions for: 1) Real-ti me processing of complex intensive care physiological signals for new and earlier condition onset detection; 2) new approaches to physiological data analysis to support clinical research; and 3) cloud computing/services computing to provide rural and remote communities with greater options for a dvanced critical care within their own community healthcare facilities.