GUIDED DATA PRESENTATION

A computer system comprises a computer, a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and an instrumentation system. The instrumentation system is coupled to a patient to gather data about a patient over time. The data is arranged in a flowsheet, only a portion of which can be displayed at one time. Indicators are used to indicate the presence of data off-display meeting a preselected criterion. This criterion can be the existence of a value entry or the existence of a value entry exceeding a threshold, for example. Upon activation of an indicator, the display scrolls to the next flowsheet neighborhood containing an entry meeting the criterion. In this way, a physician or other operator can navigate efficiently and rapidly through a large flowsheet. The invention allows an operator to skip large quantities of empty cells and uninteresting data when the flowsheet is sparsely filled.