# Pediatric patient safety learning laboratory to re-engineer continuous physiologic monitoring systems

> **NIH AHRQ R18** · CHILDREN'S HOSP OF PHILADELPHIA · 2021 · $578,039

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
The broad objective of this proposal is to establish a pediatric Patient Safety Learning Laboratory (PSLL) at
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Working in a transdisciplinary fashion, CHOP PSLL investigators
will collaboratively apply innovative scientific approaches that integrate their respective disciplines to achieve
the goal of analyzing and re-engineering hospital and home physiologic monitoring systems to maximize alarm
informativeness. Current systems used to continuously monitor children’s vital signs in hospital ward and home
settings generate alarms intended to warn caretakers— nurses in the hospital and parents at home— of
conditions that warrant their immediate attention. However, both systems suffer from low informativeness and
thus pose patient safety risks such as alarm fatigue that are relevant to critical illness detection, diagnosis, and
treatment. This PSLL brings together expertise from CHOP, University of Pennsylvania, and the ECRI Institute
in diverse areas including patient safety, pediatric hospital medicine, neonatology, nursing, systems
engineering, human factors, design, medical device development, electronic health record clinical decision
support, cognitive informatics, simulation, and biostatistics. The project’s Specific Aims are (1) Re-engineer the
system of monitoring hospitalized children on acute care wards, with a focus on reducing non-informative
alarms and accelerating nurse responses to critical events, and (2) Re-engineer the system of monitoring
infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia at home, with a focus on reducing non-informative hypoxemia alarms
and improving clinicians’ access to usable longitudinal pulse oximetry data to inform supplemental oxygen
treatment. Each Aim will proceed through a stepwise process of problem analysis, design, development,
implementation, and evaluation. This project will use a framework based on the Systems Engineering Initiative
for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model and Dual Process Theory, and will apply innovative methods such as forensic
accident investigation, video alarm analysis, and in situ simulation to analyze and evaluate monitoring systems.
The end products will be redesigned systems for physiologic monitoring in hospitals and homes and a
sustainable pediatric Patient Safety Learning Laboratory at one of the top children’s hospitals in the nation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10225288
- **Project number:** 5R18HS026620-04
- **Recipient organization:** CHILDREN'S HOSP OF PHILADELPHIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Christopher Peter Bonafide
- **Activity code:** R18 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** AHRQ
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $578,039
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-30 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10225288

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10225288, Pediatric patient safety learning laboratory to re-engineer continuous physiologic monitoring systems (5R18HS026620-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10225288. Licensed CC0.

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