Visual Patient Avatar conveys critical information about a patient’s condition through colors, movement and shapes, according to Philips. It all rests within an anesthesiologist’s or anesthetist’s peripheral field of view.
Current operating room (OR) patient monitors display abundant patient data through vital signs and numbers. Anesthesiologists have to closely watch and interpret while performing calculations at the same time to determine the next steps. Paired with time constraints, this could lead to poor situational awareness, increasing the likelihood of human error.
Amsterdam-based Philips designed Visual Patient Avatar to improve situational awareness. It translates complex data into a straightforward visual design in an easy-to-understand avatar form. Anesthesiologists can recall and process vital sign information more quickly with only a glance at the monitor. This, in turn, enables more efficient and confident care.
Philips says Visual Patient Avatar has the potential to provide clinical teams with the peace of mind to make timely decisions. It enables them to concentrate on the matters at hand and prepare for what may come next.
“Created by anesthesiologists for anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists, the intentionally simple design of Visual Patient Avatar is having a profound impact on clinical confidence and addressing cognitive overload,” said Christoph Pedain, business leader, hospital patient monitoring at Philips. “By helping clinical care teams make timely decisions without losing their cognitive focus, they can prepare for what may come next – improving patient outcomes and saving lives.”
How the Philips Virtual Patient Avatar came to be
The company designed its platform in partnership with two clinicians at the Visualization Technology Research Group at the Institute of Anesthesiology, University Hospital of Zürich. They conceived the idea thanks to a hobby of flying airplanes, using a plane’s dashboard and straightforward illustrations as inspiration. The clinicians saw the benefit of a similar approach to patient monitors.
Philips said its Visual Patient Avatar launch marks the latest example of its long-standing commitment to providing reliable clinical decision support. To shore up its design, Philips and UHZ conducted studies with over 150 clinicians in two Swiss hospitals. They sought to validate and refine the platform through a variety of proven methods.
Compared to identical conventional monitoring scenarios, Visual Patient Avatar more than doubled the number of vital signs participants could recall after 3- and 10-second looks at the monitor. It increased the percentage of perceived vital signs by 57% when viewed for 10 seconds. Philips observed the perceived workload for the task decrease by 12%.
During the first use of Visual Patient Avatar, clinicians correctly identified 73% of all vital sign information.
“Both flying planes and caring for patients involve continuous evaluation of critical parameters in high-stakes environments. We had a vision to simplify the way critical information is presented in clinical settings and working with Philips to help bring this vision to life is sure to help revolutionize care,” said Dr. David Tscholl and Dr. Christoph Nöthiger, consulting anesthesiologists at University Hospital of Zürich.