A Human Factors Evaluation of Auditory Displays in Medical Electrical Equipment
Speaker: Alexandra Nai-Khee Wee, ITEE
When: 2005-08-24 09:00:00
Venue: 78-421
Host: Alexandra Nai-Khee Wee
Abstract:Sound is a very useful information channel that humans have
exploited through verbal communication, alarms and auditory
displays. Medical staff use sound in all respects-for example,
listening to the breathing of an anaesthetised patient, the steady
beeping of the pulse oximeter, or insistent alarms from equipment
when a patient is going critical. Sounds that demand the most
attention are not always the most useful, sometimes being
detrimental to work by causing annoyance and confusion.
The problem therefore is this: What is the best way to alert medical
and nursing staff to changes in a patient's state and to provide
them with enough information when needed without affecting their
ability to fix problems to which they are alerted? The design of
effective auditory alarms and displays in the operating room (OR)
and intensive care unit (ICU) environment has received much
attention from human factors engineers for over two and a half
decades. However most auditory displays currently in operating rooms
have been the product of engineering efforts and have not been
subjected to proper human factors evaluation until well after they
have been produced and put into use.
Presented in this document is a sequence of four experiments in a
program of research towards the PhD. The purpose is of the research
is as follows:
· To evaluate the effectiveness of a recently promulgated IEC
standard for melodic alarms in medical equipment (IEC 60101-1-8),
using healthcare practitioners
· To determine if a simplified melodic alarm design, unconstrained
by manufacturers' restrictions, would be more easily learned.
· To ascertain which kinds of auditory displays currently existing
in or proposed for the OR are the most effective at supporting
patient monitoring by trained anaesthetists. The auditory displays
to be compared are sonification (current pulse oximetry and a
respiratory sonification proposed by Watson & Sanderson, 2001),
generic alarms, and either the 2003 IEC 60601-1-8 standard for
alarms or the simplified version, whichever is found to be a
better alternative based upon the results of the preliminary
study.
Biography:(biography unavailable)
Type: Ph.D confirmation
Contact:Alexandra Nai-Khee Wee, seminar host (psanderson@itee.uq.edu.au)
or Guido Governatori (ITEE seminar co-ordinator)
(guido@itee.uq.edu.au)