Wearable Computers in Clinical Ward Rounds

Abstract:
Today’s hospitals are under an increased pressure to become more efficient. There is an increasing number of patients and less budget for treatment. Hospital information systems promise such a necessary increase in productivity. However the medical point of care is different from any traditional office workplace. Usability is of utmost importance because the primary concern of doctors and nurses is the patient and not the information system. In this paper we show how wearable computing can be utilized to achieve a usable solution for the point of care. A user-centered design process is followed to achieve the necessary usability. The remainder of this paper describes our solution and the expected benefits as well as the two most important steps of our design process.