Universities and the clinical monitoring industry: feckless independents or fruitful partners?

Since 1955 clinical monitoring in anesthesia care and critical care has improved markedly. However, both industry and academia find temptation to congratulate themselves on this achievement. Reflection, however, might suggest that, in comparison with analogous unrelated fields, the process of progress has been tardy, wasteful, expensive, and inefficient. 'State of the art' clinical monitoring may actually be viewed as woefully inadequate when measured by the yardstick of the possible. Analysis suggests that industry sometimes fails to grasp opportunities for progress by shared effort while academia, sometimes guilty of aloofness and isolation, may occasionally fail to cooperate actively to promote progress by sharing its experience with industry. To hasten the more efficient development of clinical monitoring by a new alliance of the clinical monitoring and computing industry and those universities, professors, and physicians with interests in clinical monitoring and computing is here proposed. A Foundation for Research, Development, and Advancement of Clinical Monitoring and Computing Devices should be established, to promote basic and practical research and development (R&D), sponsor shared specialized clinical testing facilities, special scholarships for physicians training as specialists in development of clinical monitoring devices, and promote and expand continuing medical education programs. By this multidisciplinary, cooperative activity, it is asserted that progress in the introduction of useful new clinical monitoring devices can be accelerated.