| Poor agreement on the visual interpretation of paper-based fetal heart rate (FHR) tracings is documented in the obstetrics literature. The visual interpretation performance of electronic-based FHR tracings remains to be explored. The U.S. government's stimulus for electronic medical records suggests a migration to electronic mediums. A field study of obstetric clinicians showed high use of electronic displays for viewing FHR tracings and reservations about accuracy with this medium. The objectives of this research were to understand the sources of FHR interpretation variances, derive FHR tracing display design requirements to address these sources, and test a prototype that was based on these design concepts. Visual perception, clinical judgment, and inadequate guidelines were identified as sources of performance variations, for which a prototype with an interactive variability ruler was developed. Expert and non-expert subjects interpreted tracings using the prototype and paper tracings, which resulted in comparable performance between the mediums. |
