Fuzzy logic in a patient supervision system $ S. Barro a,* , R. Marõ Ân b , F. Palacios c , R. Ruõ Âz d a University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain b University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain c General Hospital of Elche, Elche, Spain d Polytechnic University of Cartagena, Cartagena, Spain Received 15 February 2000; received in revised form 12 July 2000; accepted 1 August 2000 Abstract A patient supervision system in progress for intensive and coronary care units, focused on patients with acute myocardial infarct is brie¯y described particularly regarding the role that fuzzy logic is playing in its design, and why this is so. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Fuzzy sets theory; Intensive and coronary care units; Signal processing; Intelligent patient monitoring; Fuzzy temporal reasoning 1. Intensive and coronary care units The development of both the so-called health sciences as well as information technol- ogies, has meant that within intensive coronary care units (ICCU) it is possible to handle an ever-increasing amount of signals and parameters, the usefulness of which is limited if they are not accompanied by suitable systems for the interpretation of these data. These systems must supply a information of a high semantic content (high abstraction levels) and should take into account the speci®c characteristics of each individual patient (treatment admi- nistered, clinical history, current pathologies, etc.). 2. Problem statement The development of computer systems for the monitoring, diagnosis and treatment of patients, involves dealing with a large number of complex aspects related to its operation Artificial Intelligence in Medicine 21 (2001) 193±199 $ The web page http://www-gsi.dec.usc.es/sutil/index.html links a demo of the Patient Supervision System. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: senen@dec.usc.es (S. Barro), roque@dif.um.es (R. Marõ Ân), fpalacioso@correo.coma.es (F. Palacios), ramon.ruiz@upct.es (R. Ruõ Âz). 0933-3657/01/$ ± see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0933-3657(00)00085-3