Alarms in the intensive care unit: how can the number of false alarms be reduced?

Many alarms, as they now exist in most monitoring systems, are not usually perceived as helpful by the medical staff because of the high incidence of false alarms. This paper gives an overview of the problems related to their current design and the objectives of monitoring. The current approaches used to improve the situation are then presented from two main standpoints: organizational and behavioural on the one hand, and technical on the other.