Attention to Changes on a Head-Worn Display: Two Preclinical Studies with Healthcare Scenarios.

OBJECTIVE: In two experiments, we examined how quickly different visual alerts on a head-worn display (HWD) would capture participants' attention to a matrix of patient vital sign values, while multitasking. BACKGROUND: An HWD could help clinicians monitor multiple patients, regardless of where the clinician is located. We sought effective ways for HWDs to alert multitasking wearers to important events. METHODS: In two preclinical experiments, university student participants performed a visuomotor tracking task while simultaneously monitoring simulated patient vital signs on an HWD to detect abnormal values. Methods to attract attention to abnormal values included highlighting abnormal vital signs and imposing a white flash over the entire display. RESULTS: Experiment 1 found that participants detected abnormal values faster with high contrast than low contrast greyscale highlights, even while performing difficult tracking. In Experiment 2, a white flash of the entire screen quickly and reliably captured attention to vital signs, but less so on an HWD than on a conventional screen. CONCLUSION: Visual alerts on HWDs can direct users' attention to patient transition events (PTEs) even under high visual-perceptual load, but not as quickly as visual alerts on fixed displays. Aspects of the results have since been tested in a healthcare context. APPLICATION: Potential applications include informing the design of HWD interfaces for monitoring multiple processes and informing future research on capturing attention to HWDs.

Spearcons for Patient Monitoring: Laboratory Investigation Comparing Earcons and Spearcons.

Objective We compared the effectiveness of single-tone earcons versus spearcons in conveying information about two commonly monitored vital signs: oxygen saturation and heart rate. Background The uninformative nature of many medical alarms-and clinicians' lack of response to alarms-is a widespread problem that can compromise patient safety. Auditory displays, such as earcons and spearcons (speech-based earcons), may help clinicians maintain awareness of patients' well-being and reduce their reliance on alarms. Earcons are short abstract sounds whose properties represent different types and levels of information, whereas spearcons are time-compressed spoken phrases that directly state their meaning. Listeners might identify patient vital signs more accurately with spearcons than with earcons. Method In Experiment 1 we compared how accurately 40 nonclinician participants using either (a) single-tone earcons differentiated by timbre and tremolo or (b) Cantonese spearcons recorded using a female Cantonese voice could identify both oxygen saturation and heart rate levels. In Experiment 2 we tested the identification performance of six further nonclinician participants with spearcons recorded using a male Cantonese voice. Results In Experiment 1, participants using spearcons identified both vital signs together more accurately than did participants using earcons. Participants using Cantonese spearcons also learned faster, completed trials faster, identified individual vital signs more accurately, and felt greater ease and more confident when identifying oxygen saturation levels. Experiment 2 verified the previous findings with male-voice Cantonese spearcons. Conclusion Participants identified vital signs more accurately using spearcons than with the single-tone earcons. Application Spearcons may be useful for patient monitoring in situations in which intermittently presented information is desirable.

Monitoring vital signs with time-compressed speech.

Spearcons-time-compressed speech phrases-may be an effective way of communicating vital signs to clinicians without disturbing patients and their families. Four experiments tested the effectiveness of spearcons for conveying oxygen saturation (SpO2) and heart rate (HR) of one or more patients. Experiment 1 demonstrated that spearcons were more effective than earcons (abstract auditory motifs) at conveying clinical ranges. Experiment 2 demonstrated that casual listeners could not learn to decipher the spearcons whereas listeners told the exact vocabulary could. Experiment 3 demonstrated that participants could interpret sequences of sounds representing multiple patients better with spearcons than with pitch-based earcons, especially when tones replaced the spearcons for normal patients. Experiment 4 compared multiple-patient monitoring of two vital signs with either spearcons, a visual display showing SpO2 and HR in the same temporal sequence as the spearcons, or a visual display showing multiple patient levels simultaneously. All displays conveyed which patients were abnormal with high accuracy. Visual displays better conveyed the vital sign levels for each patient, but cannot be used eyes-free. All displays showed accuracy decrements with working memory load. Spearcons may be viable for single and multiple patient monitoring. Further research should test spearcons with more vital signs, during multitasking, and longitudinally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).