User-centred design and evaluation of a tele-operated echocardiography robot

Giuliani, Manuel; Szcz??niak-Sta?czyk, Dorota; Mirnig, Nicole; Stollnberger, Gerald; Szyszko, Malgorzata; Sta?czyk, Bartlomiej; Tscheligi, Manfred

Abstract

We present the collected findings of a user-centred approach for developing a tele-operated robot for remote echocardiography examinations. During the three-year development of the robot, we involved users in all development stages of the robot, to increase the usability of the system for the doctors. For requirement compilation, we conducted a literature review, observed two traditional examinations, arranged focus groups with doctors and patients, and conducted two online surveys. During the development of the robot, we regularly involved doctors in usability tests to receive feedback from them on the user interface for the robot and on the robot’s hardware. For evaluation of the robot, we conducted two eye tracking studies. In the first study, doctors executed a traditional echocardiography examination. In the second study, the doctors conducted a remote examination with our robot. The results of the studies show that all doctors were able to successfully complete a correct ultrasonography examination with the tele-operated robot. In comparison to a traditional examination, the doctors on average only need a short amount of additional time to successfully examine a patient when using our remote echocardiography robot. The results also show that the doctors fixate considerably more often, but with shorter fixation times, on the USG screen in the traditional examination compared to the remote examination. We found further that some of the user-centred design methods we applied had to be adjusted to the clinical context and the hectic schedule of the doctors. Overall, our experience and results suggest that the usage of user-centred design methodology is well suited for developing medical robots and leads to a usable product that meets the end users’ needs.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 25, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 16, 2020
• Publication Date: May 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Apr 8, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 22, 2020
• Journal: Health and Technology
• Electronic ISSN: 2190-7188
• Publisher: Springer (part of Springer Nature)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Pages: 649-655
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-019-00399-0
• Keywords: Biotechnology; Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology; Bioengineering; Biomedical Engineering
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5866107
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12553-019-00399-0
• Additional Information: Received: 22 August 2019; Accepted: 25 November 2019; First Online: 16 March 2020; : ; : The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.; : The ethics committee of Clinical Hospital No 4 Lublin reviewed and approved this study.; : We informed all doctors and patients about the purpose of this study. All participants signed an informed consent form.