Design and Evaluation of a Context-aware User-interface for Patient Rooms

• Main Author: Bhatnagar, Manas
• Other Authors: Mihailidis, Alex
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: User interface; patient room information; Human Computer Interface; Context awareness; Clinical Engineering; Health Informatics; Ethnographic design; 0769
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/42686

The process of patient care relies on clinical data spread across specialized hospital departments. Powerful software is being designed to assimilate this disconnected patient data before treatment can be decided. However, these data are often presented to clinicians on interfaces that do not fit clinical workflows, leading to poor operational efficiency and increased patient safety risks. This project relies on ethnographic design methods to create evidence of clinician preferences pertaining to the presentation and collection of information on user interfaces in patient rooms. Using data gathered in clinical observation, a prototype interface was designed to enable doctors to conduct clinical tasks through a usable patient room interface. The prototype evaluation with doctors identified clinical tasks that are relevant in the patient room and provided insight into the perceived usability of such an interface. The evaluation sessions also elucidated on issues of patient-centeredness in technology design, effortless authentication and interface customizability.