Virtual Reality Simulator for Medical Auscultation Training

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. According to the Oxford English dictionary, auscultation is “the action of listening to sounds from the heart, lungs, or other organs, typically with a stethoscope, as a part of medical diagnosis.” In this work, we describe a medical simulator that includes audio, visual, pseudo-haptic, and spatial elements for training medical students in auscultation. In our training simulator, the user is fully immersed in a virtual reality (VR) environment. A typical hospital bedside scenario was recreated, and the users can see their own body and the patient increase immersion. External tracking devices are used to acquire the user’s movements and map them into the VR environment. The main idea behind this work is for the user to associate the heart and lung sounds, as heard through the stethoscope with the corresponding health-related problems. Several sound parameters including the volume, give information about the type and severity of the disease. Our simulator can reproduce sounds belonging to the heart and lungs. Through the proposed VR-based training, the medical student ideally will learn to relate sounds to illnesses in a realistic setting, accelerating the learning process

Measuring the Use of the Active and Assisted Living Prototype CARIMO for Home Care Service Users: Evaluation Framework and Results

To address the challenges of aging societies, various information and communication technology (ICT)-based systems for older people have been developed in recent years. Currently, the evaluation of these so-called active and assisted living (AAL) systems usually focuses on the analyses of usability and acceptance, while some also assess their impact. Little is known about the actual take-up of these assistive technologies. This paper presents a framework for measuring the take-up by analyzing the actual usage of AAL systems. This evaluation framework covers detailed information regarding the entire process including usage data logging, data preparation, and usage data analysis. We applied the framework on the AAL prototype CARIMO for measuring its take-up during an eight-month field trial in Austria and Italy. The framework was designed to guide systematic, comparable, and reproducible usage data evaluation in the AAL field; however, the general applicability of the framework has yet to be validated

Aktives Altern im digitalen Zeitalter

Altersgerechte Assistenzsysteme leisten einen wichtigen Beitrag, die Lebensumgebung mit intelligenter Technik gesundheitsfördernder und selbstbestimmt zu gestalten. Diverse Sensoren, Geräte und Dienste (z.B. Sturzmeldesysteme, Exergames und Fitnessprogramme) sind heute verfügbar, jedoch steckt die Überprüfung der Wirksamkeit dieser Applikationen noch in den Kinderschuhen. Schlagworte wie „user-centered design“ hin zu einem „partizipatorischen Design“ beschreiben gerade den Umbruch, der in der App-Entwicklung vonstattengeht. Der vorliegende Open Access Sammelband enthält Ergebnisse aus empirischen Studien; aus der Sicht unterschiedlicher wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen wird das Thema erörtert. Dies ist ein Open-Access-Buch. Dies ist ein Open-Access-Buch