Integrating Context-Aware Public Displays Into a Mobile Hospital Information System

Abstract

Hospitals are convenient settings for deployment of ubiquitous computing technology. Not only are they technology-rich environments, but their workers experience a high level of mobility resulting in information infrastructures with artifacts distributed throughout the premises. Hospital information systems (HISs) that provide access to electronic patient records are a step in the direction of providing accurate and timely information to hospital staff in support of adequate decision-making. This has motivated the introduction of mobile computing technology in hospitals based on designs which respond to their particular conditions and demands. Among those conditions is the fact that worker mobility does not exclude the need for having shared information artifacts particular locations. In this paper, we extend a handheld-based mobile HIS with ubiquitous computing technology and describe how public displays are integrated with handheld and the services offered by these devices. Public displays become aware of the presence of physicians and nurses in their vicinity and adapt to provide users with personalized, relevant information. An agent-based architecture allows the integration of proactive components that offer information relevant to the case at hand, either from medical guidelines or previous similar cases.

Designing Collaborative Healthcare Technology for the Acute Care Workflow

“…The fields of human factors and human-computer interaction have employed various means to augment clinical settings for teams [11], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]. France et al [28] found electronic whiteboard use reduces physician workload in an ED, resulting in fewer workflow interruptions.…”

“…France et al [28] found electronic whiteboard use reduces physician workload in an ED, resulting in fewer workflow interruptions. Others explored the use of shared mobile devices and large displays for teams working throughout a unit, showing that shared systems can improve team task coordination [23], [24].…”

“…In healthcare, shared displays enable clinicians to manage patient information, better attend to ongoing tasks, and view critical information. They have been applied as cognitive aids to support SA in a variety of ways [11], [23], [24], [27].…”

Supporting casual interactions between board games on public tabletop displays and mobile devices

“…They use hand-held devices to augment, comment and annotate public content which is displayed on public displays. In the healthcare domain, public and private displays are used by Favela et al [7] to support the decision making of doctors and nurses with mobile computing technologies. Semipublic displays for collaboration within smaller groups have been developed by Huang et al [13].…”

A Novel Clinical Pharmacy Management System in Improving the Rational Drug Use

“…Hospital Information System (HIS) has been applied in many hospitals, which is utilized to store, process and manage the massive medical data by computers, and the essential part of HIS is the pharmacy management system [1]. Currently, the pharmacy management system used in our hospital is developed mainly concerning the guarantee of drug supply, in which the core part consists of the input, selling and storage of drugs, i.e.…”