Paul Schlosser
The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia
Head-worn displays (HWDs) offer their users high mobility, hands-free operation, and “see-what-I-see” features. In the prehospital environment, emergency medical services (EMS) staff could benefit from the unique characteristics of HWDs. We conducted a field study to analyze work practices of EMS staff and the potential of HWDs to support their activities. Based on our observations and the comments of EMS staff, we propose three use cases for HWDs in the prehospital environment. They are (1) enhanced communication between different care providers, (2) hands-free access to clinical monitoring and imaging, (3) and improved realism of training scenarios. We conclude with a set of design considerations and suggest that for the successful implementation of HWDs in EMS environments, researchers, designers, and clinical stakeholders should consider the harsh outdoor environment in which HWDs will be used, the extensive workload of staff, the complex collaboration performed, privacy requirements, and the high variability of work.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445614
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2021.acm.org/)