Evaluation of a tactile display around the waist for physiological monitoring under different clinical workload conditions.

In this study, we have assessed the usability of a tactile belt prototype for clinical monitoring of physiologic patient data in the operating room under low workload (LW) and high workload (HW) conditions. In previous investigations, we have evaluated tactile technology in clinical settings and demonstrated that anesthesiologists have enhanced situational awareness towards adverse clinical events when a tactile display prototype is used as a supplemental monitoring device. To further evaluate the effectiveness of our tactile belt prototype, we compared the effects of workload on the performance of anesthesiologists in terms of accuracy and response time in tactile alert identification. We also administered a post-study questionnaire to evaluate the usability of the tactile belt as well as users' opinions about the device. We found that the response time to tactile alert identification to be faster under LW than under HW, however the accuracy of identification was not statistically different. Participants rated the tactile belt prototype as comfortable to use and the tactile alert scheme as easy to learn. Our findings further support the feasibility and efficacy of vibrotactile devices for enhancing physiological monitoring of patients in clinical environments.