Improved Patient Monitoring with a Novel Multisensory Smartwatch Application

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Medical Informatics

Background:

• Auditory medical alarms face criticism for poor learnability, discernibility, and relevance.
• These issues contribute to patient harm, alarm fatigue, and suboptimal informatic system design.
• Current medical alarm systems require significant improvement for effective patient monitoring.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel trimodal patient monitoring smartwatch application.
• To assess the impact of the new system on alarm identification accuracy and response time.
• To determine if the novel system reduces perceived mental workload compared to traditional alarms.

Main Methods:

• A feasibility study involving participants in two phases: control and a novel trimodal system.
• Participants identified auditory icon alarms (heart rate, oxygenation, blood pressure) during a cognitive task.
• Performance metrics included accuracy and response time (RT) for alarm identification.

Main Results:

• The novel trimodal system significantly improved overall alarm identification accuracy (p < 0.01), especially in co-alarm situations (p < 0.01).
• Response time (RT) was significantly faster across all alarm types with the new system (p < 0.01).
• Participants reported a decrease in mental workload when using the novel system.

Conclusions:

• The novel trimodal patient monitoring system demonstrates superior performance compared to current standards.
• Improvements in accuracy, RT, and reduced mental workload suggest potential benefits for clinical monitoring.
• This system could positively impact medical informatic systems and patient/clinician experiences.