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Abstract

This invention relates generally to monitoring systems and more particularly concerns devices and systems used to monitor patients lying in hospital beds or in other care giving environments. According to a first aspect of the instant invention, a microprocessor based patient monitor is disclosed which includes a loudspeaker driven by a power amplifier responsive to an input signal derived from a programmable volume control. The microprocessor synthesizes any one of multiple alarm sounds under software control, operates the programmable volume control of the alarm system and activates and deactivates the alarm in response to the electronic signals received from the sensor and a user interface. An electrically erasable programmable read-only memory accessible by the processor stores data which can be modified to tailor the operations of the monitor to suit a variety of different needs. According to still another aspect of the instant invention, a microprocessor-based patient monitor is disclosed which has a personality that is defined by software that is resident in modifiable nonvolatile memory, which software can thus be altered to change the programmed responses of the monitor. Finally, a software and hardware system is provided for reading information from and writing information to modifiable nonvolatile RAM within a microprocessor-based patient monitor. This information might be parameter settings, data values, or computer instructions.

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First Claim