Usability of Mobile Computing in Emergency Response Systems – Lessons Learned and Future Directions

Mobile information systems show high potential in supporting emergency physicians in their work at an emergency scene. Particularly, information received by the hospital’s emergency room well before the patients’ arrival allows the emergency room staff to optimally prepare for adequate treatment and may thus help in saving lives. However, utmost care must be taken with respect to the usability of mobile data recording and transmission systems since the context of use of such devices is extremely delicate: Physicians must by no means be impeded by data processing tasks in their primary mission to care for the victims. Otherwise, the employment of such high tech systems may turn out to be counter productive and to even risk the patients’ lives. Thus, we present the usability engineering measures taken within an Austrian project aiming to replace paper-based Emergency Patient Care Report Forms by mobile electronic devices. We try to identify some lessons learned, with respect to both, the engineering process and the product itself.