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Head-Worn Displays for Emergency Medical Services Staff: Properties of Prehospital Work, Use Cases, and Design Considerations

Published: 07 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Head-worn displays (HWDs) offer their users high mobility, hands-free operation, and “see-what-I-see” features. In the prehospital environment, emergency medical services (EMS) staff could benefit from the unique characteristics of HWDs. We conducted a field study to analyze work practices of EMS staff and the potential of HWDs to support their activities. Based on our observations and the comments of EMS staff, we propose three use cases for HWDs in the prehospital environment. They are (1) enhanced communication between different care providers, (2) hands-free access to clinical monitoring and imaging, (3) and improved realism of training scenarios. We conclude with a set of design considerations and suggest that for the successful implementation of HWDs in EMS environments, researchers, designers, and clinical stakeholders should consider the harsh outdoor environment in which HWDs will be used, the extensive workload of staff, the complex collaboration performed, privacy requirements, and the high variability of work.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2021
    10862 pages
    ISBN:9781450380966
    DOI:10.1145/3411764
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    1. Emergency medical services
    2. Head-worn display
    3. Smart glasses

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    • (2023)A Smart Glass Telemedicine Application for Prehospital Communication: User-Centered Design (Preprint)Journal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/53157Online publication date: 27-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Smart Glasses for Supporting Distributed Care Work: Systematic ReviewJMIR Medical Informatics10.2196/4416111(e44161)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2023
    • (2023)Supporting Awareness of Dynamic Data: Approaches to Designing and Capturing Data within Interactive Clinical ChecklistsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3595979(1293-1308)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
    • (2022)Applications and User Perceptions of Smart Glasses in Emergency Medical Services: Semistructured Interview StudyJMIR Human Factors10.2196/308839:1(e30883)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2022
    • (2022)Designing for Inaccessible Emergency Medical Service Contexts: Development and Evaluation of the Contextual Secondary Video ToolkitProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517538(1-17)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2022)A Study of Real-time Information on User Behaviors during Search and Rescue (SAR) Training of Firefighters2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)10.1109/VRW55335.2022.00085(387-394)Online publication date: Mar-2022

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