Alarm fatigue is one of the most persistent patient-safety hazards in modern critical care. Studies consistently find that between 72% and 99% of clinical alarms are non-actionable — and every one of them chips away at a care team’s ability to respond when the alarm is real.

The study design

Working with 14 ICUs across five health systems, we compared alarm burden for six months before and after deployment of adaptive thresholds on the Halo X3 platform. The adaptive system personalizes alarm limits to each patient’s baseline within regulatory-approved bounds, rather than applying one static population-wide default.

What we found

Total alarm volume fell 41% with no increase in missed critical events, as verified by independent chart review. Nurse-reported interruption scores improved in every participating unit, and time-to-response for true critical alarms improved by a median of nine seconds.

Why it matters

Nine seconds sounds small until you consider what it represents: a care team that trusts its monitors again. When alarms are meaningful, people move. That is the entire premise behind our monitoring roadmap — fewer, better signals.