Exploring Contradictions in the Use of Mobile Technology by Multidisciplinary Healthcare Teams

Modern healthcare is predominantly delivered by a multidisciplinary health care team (MHCT). MHCTs in hospitals have shown to improve health outcomes through enhanced communication and improved patient satisfaction. Mobile technology is increasingly being used in healthcare to provide quality care to patients. Healthcare professionals are embracing mobile technologies, as evidenced by substantial research contributions. This study is extending recent research into the use of mobile technology by a MHCT using Activity Theory as a theoretical lens. The current research focusses on exploring the contradictions that emerge as a result of the use of mobile technologies by the MHCTs. Based on data collected from four cases, this study reveals some significant contradictions focusing on the tool dimension; more specifically, i) Personal device Vs. Professional device ii) Flexibility of the device Vs. Restricted access iii) Anywhere, anytime Vs. Drawing boundaries

Supporting medical ward rounds through mobile task and process management

In a hospital, ward rounds are crucial for task coordination and decision-making. In the course of knowledge-intensive patient treatment processes, it should be possible to quickly define tasks and to assign them to clinicians in a flexible manner. In current practice, however, task management is not properly supported. During a ward round, emerging tasks are jotted down using pen and paper and their processing is prone to errors. In particular, staff members must manually keep track of the status of their tasks. To relieve them from such a manual task management, we introduce the MedicalDo (MEDo) approach. It transforms the pen and paper worksheet to a digital user interface on a mobile device. Thereby, MEDo integrates process support, task management, and access to the patient record. Interviews of medical staff members have revealed that they crave for a mobile process and task support. This has been further confirmed in a case study we conducted in four different wards. Finally, in user experiments, we have demonstrated that MEDo puts task acquisition on a level comparable to that of pen and paper. Overall, MEDo enables users to create, monitor and share medical tasks based on a mobile and user-friendly platform

An Overview of Self-Adaptive Technologies Within Virtual Reality Training

This overview presents the current state-of-the-art of self-adaptive technologies within virtual reality (VR) training. Virtual reality training and assessment is increasingly used for five key areas: medical, industrial & commercial training, serious games, rehabilitation and remote training such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Adaptation can be applied to five core technologies of VR including haptic devices, stereo graphics, adaptive content, assessment and autonomous agents. Automation of VR training can contribute to automation of actual procedures including remote and robotic assisted surgery which reduces injury and improves accuracy of the procedure. Automated haptic interaction can enable tele-presence and virtual artefact tactile interaction from either remote or simulated environments. Automation, machine learning and data driven features play an important role in providing trainee-specific individual adaptive training content. Data from trainee assessment can form an input to autonomous systems for customised training and automated difficulty levels to match individual requirements. Self-adaptive technology has been developed previously within individual technologies of VR training. One of the conclusions of this research is that while it does not exist, an enhanced portable framework is needed and it would be beneficial to combine automation of core technologies, producing a reusable automation framework for VR training

Context-Based Workplace Awareness: Concepts and Technologies for Supporting Distributed Awareness in a Hospital Environment

Abstract. Maintaining an awareness of the working context of fellow co-workers is crucial to successful cooperation in a workplace. For mobile, non co-located workers, however, such workplace awareness is hard to maintain. This paper investigates how context-aware computing can be used to facilitate workplace awareness. In particular, we present the concept of Context-Based Workplace Awareness, which is derived from years of in-depth studies of hospital work and the design of computer supported cooperative work technologies to support the distributed collaboration and coordination of clinical work within large hospitals. This empirical background has revealed that an awareness especially of the social, spatial, temporal, and activity context plays a crucial role in the coordination of work in hospitals. The paper then presents and discusses technologies designed to support context-based workplace awareness, namely the AWARE architecture, and the AwarePhone and AwareMedia applications. Based on almost 2 year' deployment of the technologies in a large hospital, the paper discuss how the four dimension of context-based workplace awareness play out in the coordination of clinical work

The Trajectory of IT in Healthcare at HICSS: A Literature Review, Analysis, and Future Directions

Research has extensively demonstrated that healthcare industry has rapidly implemented and adopted information technology in recent years. Research in health information technology (HIT), which represents a major component of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, demonstrates similar findings. In this paper, review the literature to better understand the work on HIT that researchers have conducted in HICSS from 2008 to 2017. In doing so, we identify themes, methods, technology types, research populations, context, and emerged research gaps from the reviewed literature. With much change and development in the HIT field and varying levels of adoption, this review uncovers, catalogs, and analyzes the research in HIT at HICSS in this ten-year period and provides future directions for research in the field

Exploring glass as a novel method for hands-free data entry in flexible cystoscopy

We present a way to annotate cystoscopy finding on Google Glass in a reproducible and hands free manner for use by surgeons during operations in the sterile environment inspired by the current practice of hand-drawn sketches. We developed three data entry variants based on speech and head movements. We assessed the feasibility, benefits and drawbacks of the system with 8 surgeons and Foundation Doctors having up to 30 years' cystoscopy experience at a UK hospital in laboratory trials. We report data entry speed and error rate of input modalities and contrast it with the participants' feedback on their perception of usability, acceptance, and suitability for deployment. The results are supportive of new data entry technologies and point out directions for future improvement of eyewear computers. The findings can be generalised to other endoscopic procedures (e.g. OGD/laryngoscopy) and could be included within hospital IT in the future