AS ICT

 Have an understanding of how organizations use ICT.  Be able to describe a number of uses, giving the hardware and software requirements  Be able to describe the applications that these uses can be put to.

 The main use of computer control in hospitals is in life- support systems. Sensors attached to a patient monitor  pulse  temperature  blood pressure  breathing rate  The readings are taken at regular intervals and used as input to a computer.If any of these readings goes outside acceptable levels an output signal sets off an alarm to alert the nursing staff.

These systems may be used for  patients in intensive care (eg after operations)  prematurely born babies The advantages of this system:  monitoring can be continuously done 24 hours a day  no chance of human errors due to eg tiredness  frees the nursing staff to carry out other duties Disadvantages:  these systems are expensive

 Greater accuracy than a human  Lower running costs compared with a human  24/7 monitoring of patients (robots do not get tired)  Monitoring of many different systems at once  Very rapid response  Continuous process, no need for breaks  Can monitor several patients at once – nurses are freed up to do other things

 Computer control used in two major medical applications:  Intensive care  Surgery  However, both still require human intervention, so we regard it as an open loop system

 The output does not automatically directly affect the input  Instead, the output is usually some sort of a signal (an alarm/flashing light etc) which alerts humans to the need for intervention

 Monitoring & Measurement rather than control

 In a closed-loop control system, a sensor monitors the output (the vehicle's speed)  It feeds the data to a computer which continuously adjusts the control input (the throttle) as necessary to keep the control error to a minimum (that is, to maintain the desired speed).

 Patients monitored with sensors  Blood pressure  Pulse rate  Body temperature  Computer is pre-set with normal range of values  Constantly compares data sent back by the sensors to those values  If any body-function data falls outside the pre-set values, an alarm sounds

 Robotic surgery using robotic arms & cameras inside the patient’s body  End effector: usually a scalpel  Surgeon controls robotic arms by using a console  When the surgeon moves her/his hands, the robot arms & cameras respond exactly to the moves they make  Surgeon is in complete control, but the work is more accurate  Less invasive  Smaller scale surgery  Quicker recovery time  Less occupation of hospital beds