Human-centered visualization technologies for patient
monitoring are the future: a narrative review
by Greta
Gasciauskaite, Justyna Lunkiewicz, Tadzio R. Roche, Donat R. Spahn, Christoph
B. Nöthiger and David W. Tscholl
Critical Care volume 27,
Article number: 254 Published: 28
June 2023
Medical technology innovation has improved patient
monitoring in perioperative and intensive care medicine and continuous
improvement in the technology is now a central focus in this field. Because
data density increases with the number of parameters captured by
patient-monitoring devices, its interpretation has become more challenging.
Therefore, it is necessary to support clinicians in managing information
overload while improving their awareness and understanding about the patient’s
health status. Patient monitoring has almost exclusively operated on the
single-sensor–single-indicator principle—a technology-centered way of
presenting data in which specific parameters are measured and displayed
individually as separate numbers and waves. An alternative is user-centered
medical visualization technology, which integrates multiple pieces of
information (e.g., vital signs), derived from multiple sensors into a single
indicator—an avatar-based visualization—that is a meaningful representation of
the real-world situation. Data are presented as changing shapes, colors, and
animation frequencies, which can be perceived, integrated, and interpreted much
more efficiently than other formats (e.g., numbers). The beneficial effects of
these technologies have been confirmed in computer-based simulation studies;
visualization technologies improved clinicians’ situation awareness by helping
them effectively perceive and verbalize the underlying medical issue, while
improving diagnostic confidence and reducing workload. This review presents an
overview of the scientific results and the evidence for the validity of these
technologies.
