Physical and physiological problems of medical monitoring

This review discusses physiological, engineering, ergonomic, cognitive, and economic aspects of medical monitoring, which is among the most rapidly developing and sophisticated areas of medicine and medical engineering in the current historical context. A particular emphasis is laid on clinical requirements for monitoring, monitors, and monitored parameters, as well as challenges and debatable and problematic aspects of monitoring, including interpretation of physiological signals, the impact of monitoring on treatment outcomes in patients, challenges in designing automated systems for controlling the physiological functions of a patient based on monitoring data, and monitoring of the integrative assessment of the state of the human body as a complementary and sometimes more effective alternative to conventional “analytical” types of monitoring of particular physiological functions and parameters.