JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The Patient Monitor (PM) is one of the most commonly used medical devices in hospitals worldwide. PMs are used to monitor patients’ vital signs in a wide variety of patient care settings, especially in critical care settings, such as intensive care units. An interesting observation is that the design of PMs has not changed significantly over the last two decades, with the layout and structure of PMs more or less unchanged, with incremental design changes rather than significant transformational design changes occurring. The authors thus thought it timely to review the design of novel PM interfaces for enhanced usability and human factors.

Objective:

The objective of this paper was, therefore, to review innovations in PM design proposed by researchers and to explore how clinicians responded to these design changes.

Methods:

A literature search of relevant databases, following the PRISMA guidelines identified 15 related studies. A detailed description and analysis of each novel PMs were carried out, including a detailed analysis of the structure of the different user interfaces with the objective of informing future PM design. The test methodologies used to evaluate the different designs are also presented

Results:

The analysis of the literature indicates that novel displays have the potential of improving user experience and the clinical performance of nurses and doctors. However, the outcomes of the experiments comparing the novel and traditional PMs are weakened due to methodological deficiencies.

Conclusions:

More careful study design is warranted in investigating the user experience and usability of future novel PMs for real-time vital sign monitoring to establish whether or not they could be applied successfully in critical care. The authors make a series of recommendations on how future novel PM designs and evaluations can be enhanced.