AR-AI assisted ophthalmic nursing: Preliminary usability study in clinical settings

Ophthalmic ward nursing work is onerous and busy, and many researchers have tried to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist nurses in performing nursing tasks. This study aims to use augmented reality (AR) and AI technology to develop an intelligent assistant system for ophthalmic ward nurses and evaluate the usability and acceptability of the system in assisting clinical work for nurses.

Based on AR technology, under the framework of deep learning, the system management, functions, and interfaces were completed using acoustic recognition, voice interaction, and image recognition technologies. Finally, an intelligent assistance system with functions such as patient face recognition, automatic information matching, and nursing work management was developed. Ophthalmic day ward nurses were invited to participate in filling out the System Usability Scale (SUS). Using the AR-based intelligent assistance system (AR-IAS) as the experimental group and the existing personal digital assistant (PDA) system as the control group. The experimental results of the three subscales of learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction of the usability scale were compared, and the clinical usability score of the AR-IAS system was calculated.

This study showed that the AR-IAS and the PDA systems had learnability subscale scores of 22.50/30.00 and 21.00/30.00, respectively; efficiency subscale scores of 29.67/40.00 and 28.67/40.00, respectively; and satisfaction subscale scores of 23.67/30.00 and 23.17/30.00, respectively. The overall usability score of the AR-IAS system was 75.83/100.00.

Based on the analysis results of the System Usability Scale, the AR-IAS system developed using AR and AI technology has good overall usability and can be accepted by clinical nurses. It is suitable for use in ophthalmic nursing tasks and has clinical promotion and further research value.