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Improved Patient Monitoring with a Novel Multisensory Smartwatch Application

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Abstract

The design of medical alarms has been heavily criticized in the past decade. Auditory medical alarms have poor learnability, discernibility, and relevance, leading to poor patient outcomes, and alarm fatigue, and overall poor informatic system design. We developed a novel trimodal patient monitoring smartwatch application for patient monitoring. Participants completed two phases: (1) control and (2) our novel trimodal system while identifying alarms (heart rate, oxygenation, and blood pressure) and completing a cognitively demanding task. Alarms were auditory icons presented as either solo or co-alarms. Participant performance was assessed by accuracy and response time (RT) of alarm identification. Using the novel system, accuracy was significantly improved overall (p < 0.01) and in co-alarm situations (p < 0.01), but not for solo alarms (p = 0.484). RT was also significantly faster (p < 0.01) while using the novel system for all alarm types. Participants reported decreased mental workload using the novel system. This feasibility study shows that our novel alarm system performs better than current standards. Improvements in accuracy, RT and perceived mental workload indicate the potential of this system to have a positive impact on medical informatic systems and clinical monitoring, for both the patient and the clinician.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Christia Victoriano, Yoanna Ivanova, and Zachary Eidman for their assistance with methodology and data collection.

Funding

All authors have no sources of funding to report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. T.H. Chan School of Medicine, University of Massachusetts, 55 Lake Ave, North Worcester, 01655, Worcester, MA, USA

    Kendall J. Burdick

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, 37235, Nashville, TN, USA

    Mohh Gupta

  3. Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Rd, 11794, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Ayush Sangari

  4. Department of Anesthesiology, Division of Critical Care Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 1211 21st Avenue South, MAB 422, 37212, Nashville, TN, USA

    Joseph J. Schlesinger

Authors
  1. Kendall J. Burdick
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  2. Mohh Gupta
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  4. Joseph J. Schlesinger
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Contributions

KB: This author wrote the manuscript and was involved in all the revisions and writing of the manuscript. She also helped with interpretation of the data and provided assistance with the figures and tables. MG: This author acquired and analyzed all data for the study. This author assisted in writing the manuscript and was involved in revisions. AS: This author was involved in all the revisions and writing of the manuscript and provided assistance with the figures and verification of results and statistical analyses. JS: This author oversaw the entire project. This author also contributed to writing the manuscript and overseeing and contributing to all the revisions and interpretation and application of data.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kendall J. Burdick.

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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Vanderbilt University Institutional Review Board in 2021.

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Waiver of Informed Consent was obtained from each participant.

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Burdick, K.J., Gupta, M., Sangari, A. et al. Improved Patient Monitoring with a Novel Multisensory Smartwatch Application. J Med Syst 46, 83 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-022-01869-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-022-01869-1

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