Extreme mediation: Observing mental and physical health in everyday life

The excessive use of smartphones resulting in extreme mediation has been identified to result in psychological problems including anxiety, depression, and an overall neural change that is impacting people of all ages on many levels. An exploratory study using Experience Sampling Method (ESM) concluded a significant increase in positive mood, conscious awareness of the surrounding environment, and an increased number of participants self-reporting physical activity lasting 15 minutes on days without smartphone use. Results suggest the need to avoid increased use of noninvasive technology such as smartphones resulting in deterioration of mental and physical health

Consumer Health Informatics: Empowering Healthy-Lifestyle-Seekers Through mHealth

People are at risk from noncommunicable diseases (NCD) and poor health habits, with interventions like medications and surgery carrying further risk of adverse effects. This paper addresses ways people are increasingly moving to healthy living medicine (HLM) to mitigate such health threats. HLM-seekers increasingly leverage mobile technologies that enable control of personal health information, collaboration with clinicians/other agents to establish healthy living practices. For example, outcomes from consumer health informatics research include empowering users to take charge of their health through active participation in decision-making about healthcare delivery. Because the success of health technology depends on its alignment/integration with a person's sociotechnical system, we introduce SEIPS 2.0 as a useful conceptual model and analytic tool. SEIPS 2.0 approaches human work (i.e., life's effortful activities) within the complexity of the design and implementation of mHealth technologies and their potential to emerge as consumer-facing NLM products that support NCDs like diabetes

The Influence of Holistic and Analytic Cognitive Styles on Online Information Design: Toward a communication theory of cultural cognitive design

Although studies have linked culture to online user preferences and performance, few communication researchers have recognized the impact of culture on online information design and usability. It is important to ask if people are better able to use and prefer Web sites created by designers from their own culture. We propose that to improve computer-mediated communication, Web site design should accommodate culturally diverse user groups. First, a body of research is presented that aligns East Asian cultures with more holistic cognitive styles and Western cultures with more analytical cognitive styles. Building on this contrast, a theory of cultural cognitive design is proposed as a means of understanding how cognitive styles that develop under the influence of culture lead to different ways of designing and organizing information for the Web

Guidelines to Incorporate a Clinician User Experience (UX) into the Design of Patient-Operated mHealth

This interactivity demonstration paper highlights how a patient-operated mHealth solution can be designed to improve clinician understanding of a patient's health status during a first face-to-face encounter. Patients can use smartphones to retrieve difficult-to-recall-from memory personal health information. This provides an opportunity to improve patient-clinician collaboration. To explore this idea, a mixed method study with 12 clinicians in a simulated encounter was conducted. A smartphone personal health record was prototyped and used for an experimental study. Communication, efficiency, and effectiveness was improved for clinicians who experienced the prototype. Study outcomes included a validated set of design guidelines for mHealth tools to support better patient-clinician communication

Supporting Information Management in ICU Rounding

Team rounds on patients in the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) results in the generation of several paper-based and digital notes. Paper-based notes, although short-lived, act as translational artifacts that help organize and coordinate patient information and care. Maintaining double records of paper and digital notes can introduce several awareness and coordination problems such as contextually situating clinicians as to a patient's on-going care. Based on the design requirements derived from our fieldwork, we propose a new technology, PANI (Patient-centered Notes and Information Manager). PANI is a clinical tool that integrates the use of a mobile application, paper-based artifacts, and a wearable device (such as FitBit) in one system to support the management of notes and action-items that are generated throughout a typical ICU clinical shift. In this paper, we present the functional design of PANI and our preliminary findings of a participatory study that included 15 clinician participants

Secondary users and the personal mhealth record: Designing tools to improve collaboration between patients and providers

Abstract: This paper describes a patient-centered health information technology (HIT) for primary and secondary users. Primary users are the main operators of a system and control dissemination of its information [1]. Secondary users have experiences through primary users [2]. A smartphone personal health record was prototyped for use in an experimental study with providers as secondary users. Patients are often secondary users in healthcare, but patientcentered care requires that patients have digital tools to manage their own health data to be better able to participate in healthcare decisions, making them primary users [3]

Reducing Cognitive Load of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Soldier-Operators: A Novel Weapon-UAV Control Design

poster abstractDuring armed conflict, unexpected events are routinely encountered owing to the lack of battlefield information. This condition is heightened when fireteams (3-4-soldiers) on patrol are dependent on information-communication from unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) operators, miles away within a safe zone. In this scenario, communications from operators to the fireteam is time consuming, i.e., fireteams must remain unengaged and waiting for central-control information. Consequences from this battlefield configuration include potential time loss from possible evasive action and communication breakdown through compromised telecommunications. This all adds to soldier anxiety and cognitive load. Research suggests that incongruity between fireteam expectations and battlefield conditions erode the interpretation of events, leading to further degradation of effective decision-making during armed conflict or reconnaissance. In response to this problem we investigated how to improve soldier reconnaissance activities through a novel Situational-Aware UAV-Riflei System (SURS)—an integrated technology that gives the fireteam soldier-user autonomous control of the UAV with no constriction to accessing the firearm controls. Six participants, with varying degrees of experience with flying or using UAV interface controls were recruited for this study. A usability test comparing SURS with standard UAV controls focused on time-on-task and error-rate, as well as ease-of-use. Using the baseline results of the standard control interface from the UAV manufacturer, was it possible to demonstrate a significant improvement using SURS to execute complex UAV maneuver-agility tasks? The SURS system achieved positive usability results in performance and control capabilities. A comparative analysis of task speed and errors indicated a faster learning curve for the embedded SURS control interface, with a decrease in error by 30%. Besides performance benefits, an observed change in user-awareness levels (without performance loss), represents an optimum battlefield alternative for embedded controls. For our technology design we used a blue-orange Nurf-Gun in the place of a real Army regulation rifle