Design and Evaluation of a Head-Worn Display Application for Multi-Patient Monitoring

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Supervising anesthesiologists oversee junior anesthesiologists in several operating rooms to instruct and provide advice, and hence ensure high patient safety. Supervisors benefit from good situation awareness but accessing information about multiple patients can be challenging. In a user-centered design process, we have developed an interface concept for a head-worn display (HWD) to support multi-patient monitoring. The design includes data about the patients’ physiology, vital status, vital trends, and medications. We conducted an exploratory evaluation of a prototype in a high-fidelity medical simulation with six supervising anesthesiologists. Our results show that the supervisors’ situation awareness of all simulated operations improved because participants noticed and responded to multiple events over the course of the scenario. However, the supervisors reported increased mental workload due to the constant availability of patient data. We discuss insights about the HWD display, the design process, and the experience and views of staff on using the HWD.