Designing toolsfor builders.

Using handheld electronic health record (EHR) devices to collect and document patient data poses significant challenges in dynamic, time-critical, and hands-busy medical settings. Prior research has proposed wearable technologies, such as smart glass, to enable hands-free clinical documentation. Building on this, we conducted a two-year, user-centered study to iteratively design and evaluate a smart glass application for enhancing real-time clinical documentation in settings like Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Our findings provide key design insights for addressing EMS documentation challenges through smart glass technology, as well as potential barriers for successful adoption. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of these findings for developing smart glass to support documentation in fast-paced medical environments.

The application of smart glasses in healthcare, particularly for providers engaged in hands-on patient care tasks, presents unique design challenges. This study combines participatory design and usability testing to assess the user experiences of touchless interaction methods for smart glasses in the context of Emergency Medical Services (EMS). The participatory design workshops with 16 EMS providers reveal a preference for touchless interaction methods such as voice commands and pinch hand gestures, driven by the need to keep hands free and minimize cross-contamination risk. Despite this preference, the laboratory-based usability testing with 16 EMS providers indicates that both voice commands and hand gestures fall short in task performance compared to the default tangible buttons on smart glasses, primarily due to software limitations and EMS providers' unfamiliarity with touchless techniques. Our findings reveal specific issues associated with using different interaction methods when operating smart glasses. Building on these insights, we discuss design implications for smart glasses to better align with the dynamic and unique characteristics of fast-paced medical work.

Smart glasses have emerged as a promising solution for enhancing communication and care coordination among distributed medical teams. While prior research has explored the feasibility of using smart glasses to improve prehospital communication between emergency medical service (EMS) providers and remote physicians, a research gap remains in understanding the specific requirements and needs of EMS providers for smart glass implementation.

This study aims to iteratively design and evaluate a smart glass application tailored for prehospital communication by actively involving prospective users in the system design process.

Using a participatory design approach, this study provided insights into designing user-friendly smart glasses that address the current challenges EMS providers face in dynamic prehospital settings.