Data collection
respiratory dysfunction, Organ dysfunction
ECG waveforms (500 Hz, EASI lead configuration) were captured from ED arrival up to 48 h after arrival using a Philips IntelliVue MP70 with MultiMeasurement module (Philips, Eindhoven, the Netherlands) which was mounted on a semi-mobile cart equipped with a laptop to store the high-resolution waveforms. Three of these mobile monitors were available for this study. Patients were disconnected after 48 h, when they were discharged or declined further measurements.Data were collected prospectively upon arrival at the ED as well as retrospectively from the electronic patient file to obtain baseline characteristics and allow stratification into the study groups based on outcome. Laboratory measurements were measured at arrival and successively once per day, every morning per current clinical practice. Vital measurements are generally taken multiple times a day, the study followed clinical practice. Organ dysfunction was determined on daily basis using the described criteria. In the case of respiratory dysfunction, when multiple vital measurements per day were available, the worst values were used for that day. Data collected of the first 25 subjects was used in an interim analysis to assess the feasibility of the proposed methods. In this phase practical aspects of data collection were assessed, and algorithms were tested and refined to the proposed methods work as expected. This interim analysis confirmed the proposed methods and did not show any practical limitations and data collection was continued.