
Controlling Anesthesia Hardware With Simple Hand Gestures: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
Author(s) -
Gwen E. Owens,
Chris Connor
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
anesthesia and analgesia/anesthesia and analgesia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.404
H-Index - 201
eISSN - 1526-7598
pISSN - 0003-2999
DOI - 10.1213/ane.0000000000005071
Subject(s) - gesture , interface (matter) , medicine , usability , controller (irrigation) , gesture recognition , user interface , computer science , human–computer interaction , simulation , artificial intelligence , parallel computing , agronomy , biology , operating system , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method
Modern consumer electronic devices and automobiles are often controlled by interfaces that sense physical gestures and spoken commands. In contrast, patient monitors and anesthesia devices are typically equipped with panel-mounted buttons, dials, and keyboards. The increased use of noncontact gesture-based interfaces in anesthesia may improve patient safety through more intuitive and prompter control of equipment and also through reduced rates of surface contamination. A novel gesture-based controller was designed and retrofitted to a standard GE Solar 8000M patient monitor. This type of technical innovation is rare, due to closely held proprietary input control systems on commercially produced clinical equipment. Nevertheless, we hypothesized that anesthesiologists would find a contactless gesture interface straightforward to use.