SBIR Phase I: A Mobile Learning System to Reduce Unconscious Bias Among Healthcare Providers

SBIR第一阶段项目将开发一种移动技术，培训医疗保健专业人员掌握基于科学的技能，以打破无意识偏见的习惯。无意识的偏见来自于一种性格特征和一个社会群体之间习得的一系列大多是错误和负面的联系，即刻板印象，它扭曲了人们对他人的感知、推理和决策。在医疗保健领域，这些偏见往往会引发一系列歧视性的相互作用，导致误诊、住院人数增加和不必要的重复就诊，从而维持健康差距，给数百万美国人带来巨大的痛苦。此外，这些差距每年使美国经济损失数十亿美元。该项目旨在通过可扩展的移动技术解决这两个挑战，该技术将为提供者提供学习经验，以采用打破无意识偏见习惯的技能。该项目将进一步推进NSF的使命，促进所有美国人的健康、繁荣和福利，使他们能够得到最高质量的护理，而不受无意识偏见的污染。该项目的成功将有助于创造一个更健康、更有生产力的美国人口、劳动力和经济。这一努力的成功结果可能会刺激其扩展到其他部门，包括教育、执法和商业。这个项目的智力价值在于展示了该公司的专有方法，使医疗保健提供者能够对自己无意识的偏见有更强的自我意识，从而减少健康差距。该项目将通过一个移动应用程序，创造技术、话语和体验式学习的新就业机会，该应用程序提供并激励偏见打破工具的实践，以全面和可持续地打破无意识偏见的习惯。移动平台的设计将考虑到终端用户的体验和互动，以激励他们每天学习和练习改变自己无意识偏见的活动。第一阶段的目标有三个：确定用户在设计和体验方面的偏好，以便采用新技能和养成新习惯；针对有限数量的体验开发高保真度beta测试，在移动平台上教授打破偏见的技能；并与具有代表性的医疗保健提供者一起测试其可用性和可取性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This SBIR Phase I project will develop a mobile technology that can train healthcare professionals in science-based skills to break the habit of unconscious bias. Unconscious biases result from learned sets of mostly false and negative associations between a trait and a social group, i.e. stereotypes, that distort how people perceive, reason, and make decisions about other people. In healthcare, these biases often begin a chain of discriminatory interactions that lead to misdiagnoses, increased hospitalization, and unnecessary repeat visits that sustain health disparities and cause tremendous suffering to millions of Americans. Furthermore, these disparities cost the American economy multibillion dollars annually. This project aims to address both these challenges through a scalable mobile technology that will create learning experiences for providers to adopt skills that break the habit of unconscious bias. The project will further NSF's mission by advancing health, prosperity, and welfare of all Americans so they can receive the highest quality of care untainted by unconscious bias. The project's success would contribute to creating a healthier and productive American population, workforce, and economy. A successful outcome of this effort could spur its extension to other sectors, including education, law enforcement, and business.The intellectual merit of this project lies in demonstrating that the company's proprietary methodology enables healthcare providers to develop greater self-awareness about their unconscious biases and thus reduce health disparities. The project will create novel employment of technological, discursive, and experiential learning using a mobile application that offers and incentivizes the practice of bias breaking tools to fully and sustainably break the habit of unconscious bias. The mobile platform will be intentionally designed with the end user's experience and interactions in mind to incentivize them every day to learn and practice activities that transform unconscious biases in themselves. The goal in Phase I is threefold: to determine user preferences in design and experience for adopting new skills and building new habits; develop a high-fidelity beta-test for a limited number of experiences that teach breaking bias skills over a mobile platform; and test its usability and desirability with a representative number of healthcare providers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.