Exploring the Design of Streaming Data Interfaces for Emergency Medical Contexts

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Emergency Medicine

Background:

• Effective monitoring of vital signs is critical in emergency medical settings.
• Pediatric trauma resuscitation requires rapid and accurate assessment of patient status.
• Current digital checklists may not optimally display dynamic physiological data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a novel interface for displaying streaming vital sign data.
• To enhance situational awareness for clinicians during pediatric trauma resuscitation.
• To support diverse clinical experience levels through an intuitive interface.

Main Methods:

• Utilized clinician feedback from interviews and participatory design workshops.
• Developed two distinct prototypes for the streaming vital sign interface.
• Conducted design-walkthrough evaluations with emergency medical clinicians.

Main Results:

• Clinicians showed a preference for the interface design displaying trend graphs for all four vital signs concurrently.
• The developed interface aims to provide unobtrusive support for clinical decision-making.
• Participatory design effectively incorporated end-user needs into the interface development.

Conclusions:

• Streaming data interfaces on mobile devices can improve situational awareness in critical care.
• Trend graph visualization is a preferred method for presenting multiple vital signs.
• This interface design has the potential to support clinicians of all experience levels in pediatric trauma resuscitation.