Frederic Ehrler*, University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Magali Walesa, University of Geneva, School of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland Christian Lovis, University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Track: Research Presentation Topic: Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Design Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Mermaid Room: Room 4 - Queenshithe Date: 2013-09-23 11:45 AM – 01:00 PM Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Smartphones are shifting from the status of gadget dedicated to nerds to an indispensable tool that everyone wants to posses in its pocket. Caregivers don’t want step aside this evolution. They already are numerous to consult medical references through handheld devices. However, beside these personal initiatives, there is still no real global strategy to integrate these tools into hospitals. Clinicians don’t see why the use of their mobile assistant should stop at the hospital’s doors. Mobile platforms could be easily integrated to simplify clinicians’ workflow by insuring access to the most recent information at patients’ bedside.
Objective: Recording data through handheld devices opens many interrogations regarding the quality of these data. The efficiency, accuracy and users’ satisfaction of a tool depends on the proper development of an adapted interface. The specificity of handheld device prevents to rely on the layout used on personal computer screen. As there are neither evidences nor guidelines to guide us through the development of an efficient interface for mobile devices, we would like to evaluate different interfaces in order to find the most appropriate.
Method: Handheld devices are particularly suited to record patients’ vital signs. This task, essential to follow the evolution of patients’ health, must be performed accurately at patients’ bedside. Whereas entering numbers with keyboard is straightforward, performing such task on a tactile screen remains pretty unexplored. We compared 6 different interfaces dedicated to this task and evaluated them. For the purpose of the study, we recruited a user panel and asked them to record several vital sign measurements. During the study, all users’ actions were recorded for a later analysis stage. The recorded measurements allowed us to discover which interface is, the most accurate, the friendliest for users and the most efficient.
Results: The 150 participants to the study where mostly nurses (65%) but some clinicians (4%) participated as well. The questionnaire filled by the participant revealed that a significant larger proportion of young user (under 40) possess a smartphone compared to older users. The results showed that the numeric keyboard took significantly less time (p-value < 0.001 Kruskal-Wallis) than the other models to enter the digit. Regarding the accuracy the numeric keyboard does not perform significantly better than the stepper and the wheeler but outperform the other models. These objective results were confirmed by the subjective evaluation done by the users that have unanimously elected the numeric keyboard as their favorite model.
Conclusion: The results show clearly that the numeric keyboard is undoubtedly the most efficient model to input numerical measure. This model is not only the one that takes the less time to perform the task but it is also the one that induces the less errors and the one preferred by users. This result is very important to take into account for the development of future medical applications to insure a good quality of the recorded data and a good acceptance by the users.