Developing A Wearable Assistant For Hospital Ward Rounds: An Experience Report

We describe the results of a three year effort to develop, deploy, and evaluate a wearable staff support system for hospital ward rounds. We begin by describing elaborate workplace studies and staff interviews and the resulting requirements. We then present a wearable system developed on the basis of those requirements. It consists of a belt worn PC (QBIC) for the doctor, wrist worn accelerometer for gesture recognition, a wrist worn RFID reader, a bedside display, and a PDA for the nurse. Results of evaluation of the system, including simulated (with dummy patient) ward rounds with 9 different doctors and accompanying nurses are given. The results of the evaluation have lead to a new system version aimed at deployment in real life 'production environment' (doctors and nurses performing ward rounds with real patients). The paper concludes by describing this next generation system and initial experiences from a first two week test deployment in a real life hospital setting.