Continuous Determination of Respiratory Rate in Hospitalized Patients using Machine Learning Applied to Electrocardiogram Telemetry

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kite, Thomas, Ayers, Brian, Houstis, Nicholas, Osho, Asishana A., Sundt, Thoralf M., Aguirre, Aaron D
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Kite, Thomas
Ayers, Brian
Houstis, Nicholas
Osho, Asishana A.
Sundt, Thoralf M.
Aguirre, Aaron D
author_facet Kite, Thomas
Ayers, Brian
Houstis, Nicholas
Osho, Asishana A.
Sundt, Thoralf M.
Aguirre, Aaron D
contents Respiration rate (RR) is an important vital sign for clinical monitoring of hospitalized patients, with changes in RR being strongly tied to changes in clinical status leading to adverse events. Human labels for RR, based on counting breaths, are known to be inaccurate and time consuming for medical staff. Automated monitoring of RR is in place for some patients, typically those in intensive care units (ICUs), but is absent for the majority of inpatients on standard medical wards who are still at risk for clinical deterioration. This work trains a neural network (NN) to label RR from electrocardiogram (ECG) telemetry waveforms, which like many biosignals, carry multiple signs of respiratory variation. The NN shows high accuracy on multiple validation sets (internal and external, same and different sources of RR labels), with mean absolute errors less than 1.78 breaths per minute (bpm) in the worst case. The clinical utility of such a technology is exemplified by performing a retrospective analysis of two patient cohorts that suffered adverse events including respiratory failure, showing that continuous RR monitoring could reveal dynamics that strongly tracked with intubation events. This work exemplifies the method of combining pre-existing telemetry monitoring systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide accurate, automated and scalable patient monitoring, all of which builds towards an AI-based hospital-wide early warning system (EWS).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_15947
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Continuous Determination of Respiratory Rate in Hospitalized Patients using Machine Learning Applied to Electrocardiogram Telemetry
Kite, Thomas
Ayers, Brian
Houstis, Nicholas
Osho, Asishana A.
Sundt, Thoralf M.
Aguirre, Aaron D
Signal Processing
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
Respiration rate (RR) is an important vital sign for clinical monitoring of hospitalized patients, with changes in RR being strongly tied to changes in clinical status leading to adverse events. Human labels for RR, based on counting breaths, are known to be inaccurate and time consuming for medical staff. Automated monitoring of RR is in place for some patients, typically those in intensive care units (ICUs), but is absent for the majority of inpatients on standard medical wards who are still at risk for clinical deterioration. This work trains a neural network (NN) to label RR from electrocardiogram (ECG) telemetry waveforms, which like many biosignals, carry multiple signs of respiratory variation. The NN shows high accuracy on multiple validation sets (internal and external, same and different sources of RR labels), with mean absolute errors less than 1.78 breaths per minute (bpm) in the worst case. The clinical utility of such a technology is exemplified by performing a retrospective analysis of two patient cohorts that suffered adverse events including respiratory failure, showing that continuous RR monitoring could reveal dynamics that strongly tracked with intubation events. This work exemplifies the method of combining pre-existing telemetry monitoring systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide accurate, automated and scalable patient monitoring, all of which builds towards an AI-based hospital-wide early warning system (EWS).
title Continuous Determination of Respiratory Rate in Hospitalized Patients using Machine Learning Applied to Electrocardiogram Telemetry
topic Signal Processing
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15947