BackgroundPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent mental health issue among veterans. Access to PTSD treatment is influenced by geographic (ie, travel distance to facilities), temporal (ie, time delay between services), financial (ie, eligibility and cost of services), and cultural (ie, social stigma) barriers.ObjectiveThe emergence of mobile health (mHealth) apps has the potential to bridge many of these access gaps by providing remote resources and monitoring that can offer discrete assistance to trauma survivors with PTSD and enhance patient-clinician relationships. In this study, we investigate the current mHealth capabilities relevant to PTSD.MethodsThis study consists of two parts: (1) a review of publicly available PTSD apps designed to determine the availability of PTSD apps, which includes more detailed information about three dominant apps and (2) a scoping literature review performed using a systematic method to determine app usage and efforts toward validation of such mHealth apps. App usage relates to how the end users (eg, clinicians and patients) are interacting with the app, whereas validation is testing performed to ensure the app’s purpose and specifications are met.ResultsThe results suggest that though numerous apps have been developed to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD symptoms, few apps were designed to be integrated with clinical PTSD treatment, and minimal efforts have been made toward enhancing the usability and validation of PTSD apps.ConclusionsThese findings expose the need for studies relating to the human factors evaluation of such tools, with the ultimate goal of increasing access to treatment and widening the app adoption rate for patients with PTSD.

IntroductionAlthough physical activity (PA) reduces cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, physical inactivity remains a pressing public health concern, especially among African American (AA) women in the USA. PA interventions focused on AA women living in resource-limited communities with scarce PA infrastructure are needed. Mobile health (mHealth) technology can increase access to PA interventions. We describe the development of a clinical protocol for a multilevel, community-based, mHealth PA intervention for AA women.Methods and analysisAn mHealth intervention targeting AA women living in resource-limited Washington, DC communities was developed based on the socioecological framework for PA. Over 6 months, we will use a Sequential Multi-Assignment, Randomized Trial approach to compare the effects on PA of location-based remote messaging (named ‘tailored-to-place’) to standard remote messaging in an mHealth intervention. Participants will be randomised to a remote messaging intervention for 3 months, at which point the intervention strategy will adapt based on individuals’ PA levels. Those who do not meet the PA goal will be rerandomised to more intensive treatment. Participants will be followed for another 3 months to determine the contribution of each mHealth intervention to PA level. This protocol will use novel statistical approaches to account for the adaptive strategy. Finally, effects of PA changes on CVD risk biomarkers will be characterised.Ethics and disseminationThis protocol has been developed in partnership with a Washington, DC-area community advisory board to ensure feasibility and acceptability to community members. The National Institutes of Health Intramural IRB approved this research and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute provided funding. Once published, results of this work will be disseminated to community members through presentations at community advisory board meetings and our quarterly newsletter.Trial registration numberNCT03288207.

This study can inform designers and potential users of wearable technologies as well as policymakers tasked with regulating the use of these technologies while driving.

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Introduction Opioid overdose rescue situations are time-critical, high-stress scenarios that frequently require nonmedical first responders or bystanders to intervene and administer naloxone to avoid opioid-induced fatalities. Training nonmedical personnel to respond during such mentally constraining situations presents the human factors challenge of how best to design a safe and effective lay delivery system. This paper comparatively evaluates the ease of use of two nasal naloxone administration products: NARCAN ® Nasal Spray and a naloxone prefilled syringe with nasal atomizer (PFS-NA). Methods We evaluated the use requirements and usability of NARCAN ® Nasal Spray versus a naloxone PFS-NA using a systems-oriented method. First, we determined the use requirements of different user groups. Next, we focused on constructing a human factors task analysis of both products. Finally, we conducted a comparative risk assessment of the tasks that were different between the two products. Results Inexperienced users, such as nonmedical first responders and bystanders, are at the highest risk of incorrectly administering naloxone, particularly in high-stress emergency opioid overdose situations. The device Preparation and Medication Delivery tasks most differentiate the use of NARCAN ® Nasal Spray and a PFS-NA. The level of task complexity and number of steps within those tasks is substantially greater for a PFS-NA than for the NARCAN ® Nasal Spray. Conclusions NARCAN ® Nasal Spray requires fewer steps and is easier to administer than a naloxone PFS-NA. Thus, using NARCAN ® Nasal Spray should increase the likelihood that nonmedical personnel correctly deliver naloxone in time-critical, high-stress opioid overdose rescue situations. Funding ADAPT Pharma, Inc.

As part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recertification of Texas A&M University’s AGN-201M nuclear reactor, a human factors analysis was performed to evaluate the drawbacks of the current system and make design recommendations for a new console layout. The process involved three phases. Background development consisted of a literature review and expert interviews (both structured and unstructured). Process analysis was performed using hierarchical task analysis, critical incident analysis, and heuristic usability walkthroughs. Control panel redesign utilized an expanded version of link analysis through adding modern social networking analysis techniques. While social network analysis has previously been used for design, particular emphasis in this paper is placed on the novel application of faction and centrality analysis to identify group categories for console redesign.

Haptic beats, an analogous presentation to auditory beats, can be generated when a vibrotactile actuator is driven by a signal that contains two different activation frequencies. In contrast to a combined signal stimulating one location, this study explored to what extent haptic beats can be perceived as an emergent property when separate body locations are stimulated at two different frequencies. Consistent with previous findings, haptic beats were reliably perceived with paired presentations on the same fingertip; previously-unexplored locations on the palm, wrist, and elbow also supported the perception of beats. However, haptic beats were not perceived when stimuli were presented to distant locations, such as on different hands, suggesting that haptic beats most likely involve a localized mechanical integration rather than neural integration. These results have implications for the design of complex haptic displays for various domains, such as driving, navigation, medicine, and immersive virtual reality.

As suggested in recent research, some physiological measures such as breath rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, electroencephalography, and skin conductance response, can be used to indicate aspects of mental workload. Some of these physiological measures are insensitive to added mental workload at a point referred to as the cognitive redline. This redline is not well indicated in the literature, but is generally defined by patterns of performance decrements. The present study involved the use of the Multi-Attribute Task Battery-II (MATB-II) to systematically manipulate imposed multitask workload, and investigate the validity of online measures of heart rate variability (HRV) to indicate the cognitive redline, as inferred by performance and subjective workload measures.