Towards a Coherent Structure of the Anesthetist — computer Interface

Abstract

The challenge of creating an anesthesia monitoring and information system which is both efficient and manageable for the anesthesiologist led us to develop an Anesthesia Information System (AIS). This system is operational in the laboratory of our “ergonomics in medicine” research group. The emphasis of the continuing development work is on the design and improvement of the human-computer interface. Fig. 1 schematically shows the work environment of the anesthesiologist using our touch-sensitive AIS monitor. The monitor displays all diagnostic and therapeutic data gathered during the operation (organized in “pages”) as well as “virtual control elements”, such as keys and sliders for data input, data retrieval, and system control procedures. For extensive numeric data input tasks, such as recording blood transfusion data, we provide a bar code reading device (reader in Fig. 1), although there also exists a manual mode whereby this data may be entered with the help of a numeric keyboard displayed on the monitor screen.