Medical Records Research in ICU

Learning from Past ICU Stays

Helping future ICU patients

Every stay in intensive care (ICU) creates a lot of information, recorded as part of normal care. This includes readings from bedside monitors and ventilators (breathing machines), blood tests and scans, and notes written by doctors and nurses.

Much of what doctors and nurses record is in their notes. These notes show things that numbers alone can't, like what the team noticed or how a patient responded to treatment. Putting the notes together with other information gives a fuller picture of a patient's care.

Using AI (artificial intelligence), we can look at this information across thousands of past ICU stays and spot patterns. These patterns could help doctors make better decisions for future patients.

Dr Bairbre McNicholas, Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at Galway University Hospital, is working with researchers in the School of Computer Science at University of Galway on two studies. Patient information is handled securely and responsibly throughout.

Studies: 

1. SMART-FLOW : removing fluid safely

Patients in intensive care are often given large amounts of fluid as part of their treatment. If their kidneys fail, they need a machine to remove the extra fluid (a type of dialysis called CRRT).

Too much fluid can harm patients. But taking off too much, or too quickly, can harm them too. There is little evidence on the best approach, and practice varies between hospitals.

SMART-FLOW combines bedside measurements with doctors' and nurses' notes. It looks at how past patients responded to fluid removal and how they recovered. The aim is a tool that helps the bedside team decide how much fluid to remove for each patient.

2. IrelandICUdb : coming off a ventilator safely 

Patients whose lungs fail need a ventilator to breathe for them. Coming off it too early often means it has to be restarted. Staying on it longer than needed has its own risks, such as infection and a longer stay in ICU.

IrelandICUdb is building an Irish intensive care database. It combines clinical notes with measurements from bedside monitors and machines. This will help us learn what makes coming off a ventilator more likely to succeed, and when a patient is ready.

Protecting Patient Information

What we use
Information recorded as part of normal ICU care: monitor and ventilator readings, blood tests, scans and clinical notes.

What we remove
Names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and hospital numbers are removed within the hospital. The information is fully anonymised before it leaves the hospital, so it cannot be traced back to any patient.

Who has approved it
Both studies have been approved by the Galway Clinical Research Ethics Committee. They have also passed a formal privacy review (called a Data Protection Impact Assessment).

How it is controlled
The information is kept in a secure, offline research environment. Only named researchers can access it, and a data governance group oversees its use. It can only be used for these approved studies.

Your Rights

Were you treated in the ICU at Galway University Hospital between 2019 and 2025? You can ask us not to use your information in this research.

• You do not need to give a reason.
• Email or phone our team and we will send you a Withdrawal Form.
• Fill it in, sign it, and return it by post or email.
• We will confirm we have your request within 5 working days.

Why wasn't I asked? This research looks back at thousands of past ICU stays. Contacting people or their families long afterwards would be intrusive and often upsetting.

Research like this can go ahead without individual consent when asking everyone is not practical. This has been approved under the Health Research Regulations and reviewed by a research ethics committee. Instead, we share information publicly, on this page and on posters in the ICU.

Please contact us as early as possible At the hospital, your records are held under a code instead of your name. While that code is in place, we can find and remove them. Once the information is fully anonymised, it can no longer be traced back to anyone, so we can no longer remove it.

Withdrawal form: Email or phone our team and we will send it to you.

For Researchers and Clinicians

We are happy to share our experience of developing research-ready intensive care databases, including the ethics, governance and data-protection processes involved alongside the technical aspects.

If you are developing a similar project or are interested in our approach to the responsible use of AI and clinical data, please get in touch.

Contact:

By post:
Critical Care Team
CRF-1 Office 3, HRB Clinical Research Facility
Newcastle Road, Galway, H91 YR71

By email: ailis.mulhall@universityofgalway.ie / bmcnicholas@universityofgalway.ie

By telephone: 091 898375

If you are dissatisfied with how your information has been handled, you may contact the Data Protection Officer at liam.quirke@hse.ie or the Data Protection Commission at www.dataprotection.ie.