Augmenting Medical Workspaces with Kinect-based Interfaces

Medical workflow during doctor-patient consultations is rapidly changing due to the introduction of technologies such as electronic medical records (EMR). This transition has a significant impact on the quality of doctor-patient interactions, resulting in increased cognitive load on doctors, and lowered patient satisfaction. The UCSD DCOG-HCI lab at UCSD is developing a novel interactive medical workspace using “off-the-shelf” tools such as the Kinect and commercially available projectors and webcams. The goal is to create a workspace that seamlessly combines the interaction of physical and digital documents on a shared desktop, enables collaboration between the doctor and patient, and aids in patient engagement and education. To ensure a data-driven design, we are also developing a separate tool to aid in recording, analysis and annotation of rich multimodal data. Data annotation is labor-intensive and time consuming. Simplifying and automating this task with supportive technology will allow for easier analysis and a quicker turnaround of design iterations.