Ventilation System With System Status Display

Abstract

The disclosure describes a novel approach for displaying information on a ventilator system. The disclosure describes a novel system including a removable primary display and system status display. Further, the disclosure describes a novel method for displaying ventilator information and a novel method for controlling a ventilator system.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 266,731, filed Dec. 4, 2009, and entitled “Ventilation System Status Display”, which application is hereby incorporated herein by reference.INTRODUCTION[0002]Many devices now use electronic graphical user interfaces (GUIs) as the primary user interface means instead of panels with mechanical elements such as knobs, buttons, switches etc. These GUIs are typically presented on a suitably-sized display (such as a flat panel display) in conjunction with a pointing or, as is increasingly common, a touch-sensitive display.[0003]One drawback of such devices, however, is a reliance on the display for both control of the primary function of the device and monitoring of the performance of the device. This allows, under certain circumstances, for a failure of the display electronics that does not affect the performance of the device to cause the operator of the device to be unable to determine i...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0012]c) operating the system status display on less power than an amount of power necessary to operate the primary display.

[0013]Yet another aspect of this disclosure describes a ventilation system that includes: a main housing; a gas delivery system in the main housing; a ventilation control system in the main housing that controls the gas delivery system and monitors one or more of a patient physiological parameter, operational parameters of the ventilation system and user-settable parameters; a primary display controller that generates a graphical user interface and that receives user inputs through the graphical user interface and delivers commands to the ventilation control system based on the inputs; a primary display housing removably attached to the main housing; a primary display in the primary display housing that presents the graphical user interface; and a system status display incorporated into the main housing that receives status data directly from the ventilation control system. The system status display dis

Problems solved by technology

One drawback of such devices, however, is a reliance on the display for both control of the primary function of the device and monitoring of the performance of the device.

This allows, under certain circumstances, for a failure of the display electronics that does not affect the performance of the device to cause the operator of the device to be unable to determine if the device is still operational.

Another drawback of electronic GUIs is the power consumption the displays require.

Large and high resolution displays and support circuitry often consume excessive amounts of power, making them unattractive for use with battery-powered devices.

Yet another drawback related to the power consumption issue is that in order for an operator to interact with or obtain information from the device in any way, the electronic GUI must be powered on, even when the information needed is unrelated to the operation of the device.

However, such ancillary user interface elements can not be reconfigured as they are built into their devices.

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