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Advances in The Human Side of Service Engineering pp 35–44Cite as

Physiological Evaluation and Quantification of Physician’s Cognitive Workload During Interaction with Computer Based Clinical System

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 494))

Abstract

Tracking cognitive workload (CWL) of physicians interacting with health information technology (HIT) might be useful in order to identify high-risk tasks, and to flag situations when performance might be expected to decline. Eight physician radiation oncologists (3-faculty, 5-residents) pupillary responses were monitored during treatment-planning tasks. The average change in task evoked pupillary response (TEPR) from pre-set baseline was calculated and the percent of time that the TEPR dilated by ≥0.45 mm (from historical studies) was taken as a measure of CWL where performance degradation could be expected. Physician performance was assessed subjectively (willingness-to-approve the treatment-plan) and objectively (number and severity of errors). There was an association between CWL and subjective performance (p < 0.01), but not objective performance (p > 0.05) as assessed using logistic regression analysis. Future research is needed to further advance available methods to quantify the relationship between CWL and performance during physicians-HIT interactions.

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Acknowledgments

This study was originally funded by the UNC Healthcare System. The data analysis was partially supported by the grant numbers R18HS023458 and R21HS024062 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Finally, we want to express our gratitude to all participants for their time and effort while participating in our experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiation Oncology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA

    Prithima Reddy Mosaly, Lukasz Mazur & Lawrence Marks

Authors
  1. Prithima Reddy Mosaly
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  2. Lukasz Mazur
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  3. Lawrence Marks
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Prithima Reddy Mosaly .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Central Florida , Orlando, Florida, USA

    Tareq Z. Ahram

  2. University of Central Florida , Orlando, USA

    Waldemar Karwowski

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Mosaly, P.R., Mazur, L., Marks, L. (2017). Physiological Evaluation and Quantification of Physician’s Cognitive Workload During Interaction with Computer Based Clinical System. In: Ahram, T., Karwowski, W. (eds) Advances in The Human Side of Service Engineering. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 494. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41947-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41947-3_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-41946-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-41947-3

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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