The Application of the Ecological Interface Design Approach to Neonatal Intensive Care Medicine

Abstract

Ecological interface design techniques were used to first model and then develop an interface to help clinicians assess tissue oxygenation in a neonatal intensive care unit. Several challenges were encountered during this work. The abstraction hierarchy model structure that was used has limitations in this environment. The first limitation concerned the depth of knowledge that was available. Tissue oxygenation is a complex, and not totally understood process. Furthermore, it is truly distributed in nature. Both these limit the level of detail that could be included in the system model. Second, in this environment the sensor suite is very limited and is defined a-priori. Therefore, many of the variables that were identified as important in the abstraction hierarchy model are impossible to measure. Despite these limitations, the interface that resulted from the abstraction hierarchy model compared favorably to the existing interface in a simulated clinical environment.