Anyone who has recently kept a bedside vigil in a hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) is likely to have been impressed by just how much information is now gathered on a critically ill patient. Sophisticated monitors surround the bed, the electronic screens spewing out a torrent of data. That information can be vital, particularly for those near death. But it also poses a critical challenge for today's hurried nurses and physicians: how to make sense of all that data.

To help out, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center are testing a "smart" ICU technology that collects and analyzes a patient's vital signs. The artificial-intelligence system produces a 3-D graph that could make it easier for a clinician to quickly pick up any warning signs. The smart ICU uses adapted off-the-shelf software for neural networks and fuzzy logic that allows it to analyze several measurements simultaneously, looking for dangerous trends; it can also "learn" the patterns of a patient, including their ideal vital signs.