Critical Care Explorations (Mar 2022)

The Future of Critical Care: Optimizing Technologies and a Learning Healthcare System to Potentiate a More Humanistic Approach to Critical Care

  • Heather Meissen, DNP, ACNP-BC, CCRN, FCCM,
  • Michelle Ng Gong, MD, MS,
  • An-Kwok Ian Wong, MD, PhD,
  • Jerry J. Zimmerman, MD, PhD, FCCM,
  • Nalini Nadkarni, PhD,
  • Sandra L. Kane-Gil, PharmD, MSc, FCCM,
  • Javier Amador-Castaneda, BS, RRT,
  • Heatherlee Bailey, MD, FCCM,
  • Samuel M. Brown, MD, MS, FCCM,
  • Ashley D. DePriest, LD, MS, RD, CNSC,
  • Ifeoma Mary Eche, PharmD, BCCCP, FCCM,
  • Mayur Narayan, MD, MPH, MBA, MHPE, FCCM,
  • Jose Javier Provencio, MD, FCCM,
  • Nneka O. Sederstrom, MPH, PhD, FCCM,
  • Jonathan Sevransky, MD, MHS, FCCM,
  • Jordan Tremper, MHA, BSN, RN, CCRN-K,
  • Rebecca A. Aslakson, MD, PhD, FCCM, FAAHPM,
  • written on behalf of the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Future of Critical Care Taskforce

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1097/CCE.0000000000000659
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 3
p. e0659

Abstract

Read online

While technological innovations are the invariable crux of speculation about the future of critical care, they cannot replace the clinician at the bedside. This article summarizes the work of the Society of Critical Care Medicine–appointed multiprofessional task for the Future of Critical Care. The Task Force notes that critical care practice will be transformed by novel technologies, integration of artificial intelligence decision support algorithms, and advances in seamless data operationalization across diverse healthcare systems and geographic regions and within federated datasets. Yet, new technologies will be relevant and meaningful only if they improve the very human endeavor of caring for someone who is critically ill.