CAREER: Co-Designing Hands-Free Cognitive Aids with Fast-Paced Medical Teams

人类处理信息和识别关键事件的能力有限，当超过这一能力时可能会导致错误。在医疗等安全关键领域，此类错误可能导致严重后果，尤其是在许多情况下，这些错误可能是可以预防的。医疗差错的一个常见原因是卫生工作者缺乏情景意识-了解环境中发生的情况并预测下一步可能发生的情况-并在缺乏这种意识的基础上犯错误。该项目旨在通过开发新的计算和交互技术来减少这些错误，这些技术支持身体和认知上全神贯注的卫生工作者的情境意识，这些卫生工作者是紧急医疗服务（EMS）团队的一部分，在现场提供紧急医疗服务。研究团队将与EMS供应商密切合作，了解他们的认知需求，并开发免提，最小限度地分散注意力的认知辅助工具，以支持他们在快节奏的危机应对情况下的态势感知和决策。本研究的总体目标是确定如何支持快速响应医疗团队的特定上下文信息和活动的意识，同时考虑到他们在处理信息和与手持计算设备进行交互的能力有限，同时做他们的工作。该项目围绕三个主要目标展开。首先是深入了解护理人员在时间关键的医疗事件中的认知需求;这将通过分析模拟视频、眼动追踪数据和人工制品，沿着观察性实地研究和与EMS工作人员的访谈来实现。第二个目标是通过一系列参与性设计讲习班和以卫生信息技术实施的社会技术模式为基础的可用性评价活动，为快速反应医疗队设计和开发免提认知辅助工具。第三是通过将其部署在培训模拟中，测量任务绩效和患者结果沿着以及对工人的情境意识和认知负荷的影响，对功能原型进行总结性评估。总之，研究将产生与态势感知，免提技术和人机交互相关的科学知识和设计影响。该项目还将通过让高中生、本科生和研究生等不同群体参与，促进跨学科教育和研究，同时为开发面向医疗工作者和健康技术产业合作伙伴的丰富的外展计划提供基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Humans have limited capacity for processing information and recognizing critical events, which can lead to errors when this capacity is exceeded. In safety-critical areas such as medicine, such errors can lead to serious consequences, especially in the many cases where these errors might be preventable. A common cause of medical errors is when health workers lack situational awareness -- knowing what is going on within an environment and predicting what is likely to happen next -- and make mistakes based on this lack of awareness. This project looks to reduce these mistakes through developing novel computing and interaction techniques that support situational awareness for physically and cognitively preoccupied health workers who are part of emergency medical services (EMS) teams that provide urgent medical care in the field. The research team will work closely with EMS providers to understand their cognitive needs and develop hands-free, minimally distracting cognitive aids that support their situational awareness and decision-making in fast-paced crisis response situations. The overarching goal of this research is to determine how to support fast-response medical teams’ awareness of context-specific information and activities while accounting for their limited capacity in processing information and ability to interact with handheld computing devices while doing their job. The project is structured around three main aims. The first is to deeply understand the cognitive needs of care providers during time-critical medical events; this will be accomplished by analyzing simulation videos, eye-tracking data, and artifacts, along with observational field studies and interviews with EMS workers. The second is to design and develop hands-free cognitive aids for fast-response medical teams, through a series of participatory design workshops and usability evaluation activities grounded in socio-technical models of health information technology implementation. The third is to conduct summative assessment of a functional prototype through deploying it in training simulations, measuring task performance and patient outcomes along with effects on workers’ situational awareness and cognitive load. Together, the research will produce scientific knowledge and design implications related to situational awareness, hands-free technologies, and human computer interaction. The project will also promote interdisciplinary education and research through involving a diverse group of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, while providing the basis for developing a rich outreach program to medical workers and health technology industry partners.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.