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，当超出这一能力时，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，尤其是在许多错误本可预防的情况下。医疗差错的一个常见原因是卫生工作者缺乏情境意识——了解环境中正在发生什么并预测接下来可能发生什么——并基于这种意识的缺乏而犯错误。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，这些技术支持在现场提供紧急医疗服务的紧急医疗服务（EMS）团队的一部分，专注于身体和认知的卫生工作者的态势感知。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、最小干扰的认知辅助工具，以支持他们在快节奏的危机响应情况下的态势感知和决策。本研究的首要目标是确定如何支持快速反应医疗团队对特定环境信息和活动的意识，同时考虑到他们在处理信息和在工作时与手持计算设备交互的能力有限。该项目围绕三个主要目标构建。首先是深入了解在时间关键的医疗事件中护理提供者的认知需求；这将通过分析模拟视频、眼动追踪数据和人工制品，以及观察现场研究和对EMS工作人员的采访来完成。第二个目标是通过一系列参与式设计讲习班和基于卫生信息技术实施的社会技术模型的可用性评估活动，为快速反应医疗队设计和开发免提认知辅助工具。第三是对功能原型进行总结性评估，通过将其部署到培训模拟中，测量任务绩效和患者结果，以及对员工情境感知和认知负荷的影响。总之，该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含义。该项目还将通过让不同群体的高中生、本科生和研究生参与进来，促进跨学科的教育和研究，同时为向医务工作者和卫生技术行业合作伙伴制定丰富的外展计划提供基础。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。

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.