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Visual Cueing with Context Relevant Information for Reducing Change Blindness

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Abstract

Objective

Physiological monitoring is a requisite for optimal care to ensure that the condition of a patient is maintained within safe levels. Monitoring can be jeopardized by the inability of a clinician to recognize important changes in the visual display of data throughout the duration of the monitoring task. We hypothesized that the addition of a visual cue imparting contextual information to a physiological display would improve the detection ability and response time of a clinician to a change in a patient variable.

Methods

Contextual information based on trend information was added to a physiological display in the form of a visual cue. Following IRB approval, the resulting enhanced display was evaluated by 22 anesthesiologists in a simulated operating room, through the observation of six simulated scenarios using a standard anesthesia display and the enhanced display. Demographic information, response time, accuracy of detection, and usability data were collected.

Results

The enhanced display reduced the detection time to a change in the simulated scenarios by 14.4 s (95% CI: −26.4 to −2.38), and reduced the expected number of missed events per scenario by 0.23 (95% CI: −0.439 to −0.0203), based on the repeated measures analysis (Poisson model).

Conclusions

The data collected and analyzed in this study supports the addition of a visual cue to future physiological monitors. The graphic representation and the context relevant information that it transmits appears to aid clinicians. While the results indicate that enhanced visualization of context relevant information can lead to a significant improvement in event recognition and identification, further evaluation in clinical settings is required.

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Acknowledgements

Completion of this work was supported by the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A special thanks to Ping Yang (PhD, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) for providing the technical guidance of her past work that was needed to fully realize this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Systems Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jacqueline M. Tappan BASc

  2. Department of Pediatric Anesthesia, British Columbia Children’s Hospital, 1L7 – 4480 Oak St., Vancouver, BC, V6H 3V4, Canada

    Jeremy Daniels BASc, Brad Slavin BSc, Joanne Lim MASc & J. Mark Ansermino MBBCh, MSc, FRCPC

  3. Department of Statistics, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Rollin Brant PhD

Authors
  1. Jacqueline M. Tappan BASc
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  2. Jeremy Daniels BASc
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  3. Brad Slavin BSc
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  4. Joanne Lim MASc
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  5. Rollin Brant PhD
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  6. J. Mark Ansermino MBBCh, MSc, FRCPC
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. Mark Ansermino MBBCh, MSc, FRCPC.

Additional information

Presented at the Society for Technology in Anesthesia Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, USA; January 16–19, 2008.

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Tappan, J.M., Daniels, J., Slavin, B. et al. Visual Cueing with Context Relevant Information for Reducing Change Blindness. J Clin Monit Comput 23, 223–232 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10877-009-9186-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10877-009-9186-8

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