The Development of a Point of Care Clinical Guidelines Mobile Application Following a User-Centred Design Approach

This paper describes the development of a point of care clinical guidelines mobile application. A user-centred design approach was utilised to inform the design of a smartphone application, this included: Observations; a survey; focus groups and an analysis of popular apps utilised by clinicians in a UK NHS Trust. Usability testing was conducted to inform iterations of the application, which presents clinicians with a variety of integrated tools to aid in decision making and information retrieval. The study found that clinicians use a mixture of technology to retrieve information, which is often inefficient or has poor usability. It also shows that smartphone application development for use in UK hospitals needs to consider the variety of users and their clinical knowledge and work pattern. This study highlights the need for applying user-centred design methods in the design of information presented to clinicians and the need for clinical information delivery that is efficient and easy to use at the bedside

Eye movements and brain oscillations to symbolic safety signs with different comprehensibility

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate eye movements and brain oscillations to symbolic safety signs with different comprehensibility. Methods: Forty-two young adults participated in this study, and ten traffic symbols consisting of easy-to-comprehend and hard-to-comprehend signs were used as stimuli. During the sign comprehension test, real-time eye movements and spontaneous brain activity [electroencephalogram (EEG) data] were simultaneously recorded. Results: The comprehensibility level of symbolic traffic signs significantly affects eye movements and EEG spectral power. The harder to comprehend the sign is, the slower the blink rate, the larger the pupil diameter, and the longer the time to first fixation. Noticeable differences on EEG spectral power between easy-to-comprehend and hard-to-comprehend signs are observed in the prefrontal and visual cortex of the human brain. Conclusions: Sign comprehensibility has significant effects on real-time nonintrusive eye movements and brain oscillations. These findings demonstrate the potential to integrate physiological measures from eye movements and brain oscillations with existing evaluation methods in assessing the comprehensibility of symbolic safety signs.open

Mapping Cumulative Environmental Risks: Examples from The EU NoMiracle Project

We present examples of cumulative chemical risk mapping methods developed within the NoMiracle project. The different examples illustrate the application of the concentration addition (CA) approach to pesticides at different scale, the integration in space of cumulative risks to individual organisms under the CA assumption, and two techniques to (1) integrate risks using data-driven, parametric statistical methods, and (2) cluster together areas with similar occurrence of different risk factors, respectively. The examples are used to discuss some general issues, particularly on the conventional nature of cumulative risk maps, and may provide some suggestions for the practice of cumulative risk mapping

Multimodal cueing: The relative benefits of the auditory, visual, and tactile channels in complex environments

Determining the most effective modality or combination of modalities for presenting time sensitive information to operators in complex environments is critical to effective display design. This panel of display design experts will briefly review the most important empirical research regarding the key issues to be considered including the temporal demands of the situation, the complexity of the information to be presented, and issues of information reliability and trust. Included in the discussion will be a focus on the relative benefits and potential costs of providing information in one modality versus another and under what conditions it may be preferable to use a multisensory display. Key issues to be discussed among panelists and audience members will be the implications of the existing knowledge for facilitating the design of alerts and warnings in complex environments such as aviation, driving, medicine and educational settings. Copyright 2012 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Inc. All rights reserved