Conflicts of interest Chief Editors Leo Heunks: reports personal fees from Maquet Critical Care, Sweden (travel and speaking fees), and grants from Orion Pharma, Finland and Ventfree, USA, outside the submitted work. Marcus J. Schultz: None declared. Authors Hernán Aguirre-Bermeo: None declared. Jean-Michel Arnal: is employed part-time by Hamilton Medical as medical research manager. Antonio Artigas: None declared. Carmen Sílvia Valente Barbas: None declared. Tobias Becher: reports personal fees from Dräger Medical (speaking fees and reim- bursement of travel costs), outside the submitted work. Thomas Bein: None declared. Giacomo Bellani: reports grants and personal fees from Draeger medical, and per- sonal fees from Dimar SRL, Intersurgical, Hamilton and Getinge, outside the submit- ted work. Alexandra Beurton: None declared. Lluís Blanch: reports a patent (Method and system for managed related patient parameters provided by monitoring service device, number 12/538,940) and is the founder of Better Care, S.L., which is a research and development company spun off from Corporació Sanitària Parc Talulí. Lieuwe D. Bos: reports grants from the Dutch Lung Foundation (Young investigator grant and Public-Private Partnership grant), personal feesfor consultancy from Bayer, and a Short-term fellowship grants from the ERS, outside the submitted work. Laurent Brochard: reports grants from Medtronic Covidien, grants and other from Fisher Paykel, non-financial support from Air Liquide, Sentec and Philips, grants and non-financial support from General Electric, and personal fees from Baxter, outside the submitted work. Christian S. Bruells: None declared. Luigi Camporota: None declared. Irene Cavalli: None declared.