ABSTRACT
Patient vital signs monitoring, in general, involves measuring physiological parameters typically associated with cardiac and respiratory function, although other subsystem monitoring (e.g., brain, endocrine, etc.) does take place, as well as the monitoring of patient fluid and food intake and outputs (i.e., outputs in the form of blood, urine, and fecal matter). Physical observations and blood chemistry assessments obtained from serum blood draws including measurement of key ions, and blood chemistry occur regularly, based on the orders of the attending physician. Integrating medical device data into downstream applications such as electronic health record system (EHR) systems was at one time an esoteric need, of primary interest only to those conducting research in the healthcare environment. Temporal alignment refers to the accurate and timely association of the collected measurements so that they are aligned with a common time of collection and with each other and communicated to the EHR system with this time of collection.
