10th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Research Article

Mitigating Medical Alarm Fatigue with Cognitive Heuristics

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/eai.16-5-2016.2263326,
        author={Mustafa Hussain and James Dewey and Nadir Weibel},
        title={Mitigating Medical Alarm Fatigue with Cognitive Heuristics},
        proceedings={10th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare},
        publisher={ACM},
        proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH},
        year={2016},
        month={6},
        keywords={cognitive heuristics fast-and-frugal trees patient monitoring systems alarm fatigue},
        doi={10.4108/eai.16-5-2016.2263326}
    }
    
  • Mustafa Hussain
    James Dewey
    Nadir Weibel
    Year: 2016
    Mitigating Medical Alarm Fatigue with Cognitive Heuristics
    PERVASIVEHEALTH
    EAI
    DOI: 10.4108/eai.16-5-2016.2263326
Mustafa Hussain1,*, James Dewey1, Nadir Weibel2
  • 1: Florida Polytechnic University
  • 2: UC San Diego
*Contact email: mhussain@flpoly.org

Abstract

Automated patient monitoring systems su er from several design problems. Among them, alarm fatigue is one of the most critical issues, as evidenced by the Sentinel Event Alert that The Joint Commission - the U.S. hospital-accrediting body - recently issued. In this study, we explore fast-and-frugal heuristics that may be used to prioritize patient alarms, while continuing to monitor patient physiological state. By using a combination of human factors methodologies and the theory of Distributed Cognition (DCog), we studied alarm fatigue and its relationship to the underlying hospital systems. We identified three specific factors that we envision to be helpful for clinical personnel: ventilator presence, number of intravenous drips, and number of medications. We discuss their application in daily hospital operation.