Medical Collaboration Testbed.
Workshop Project Summary.
Title: A Collaboration Testbed in Medical Image-Based Examination, Diagnosis,
and Treatment
NSF Grant ECS-94-22701
PI: Terry E Weymouth
Co-PIs: Charles Meyer, Atul Prakash, Thomas Finholt, Ronald Adler, Michael
D. Cohen
University of Michigan.
http://www.sils.umich.edu/~weymouth/Medical-Collab/index.html
Post questions and comments to: Terry E Weymouth (weymouth@umich.edu ).
Project Summary.
In this project we research issues in both the building of collaboration
tools and their use. The project simultaneously addresses issues on three
fronts: the development of new collaboration technology, the development
of a toolkit for a medical application domain, and the systematic evaluation
of the effect of the introduction of collaboration technology on the current
practice of consulting. These three aspects of the study reinforce each
other: the development of new technologies and their underlying principles
is informed by the needs of users in an application area; the social science
studies provide clear methods to probe and define user needs; the introduction
of a new technology provides an opportunity to study of the effects of technology
on a working group, and the medical community gets a new set of tools.
We explore, develop, implement and test a series of prototypes for collaboration
centered around the viewing of images and video over a distance. Each prototype
supports remote health care, linking primary care facilities with the radiology
reading center at The University of Michigan Medical Center.
During the first year of this project, we have developed and evaluated the
first prototype of a session record and replay application. This development
was proceeded and followed by extensive observations of the current practice
of radiologists and primary care physicians.
In the initial year of the project, we have accomplished the following:
- Conducted over 100 hours of observations and collected over 60 hours
of video tape of current practice
- Conducted an initial in-depth study of the structure and flow of image-based
consulting in the ultra-sound and chest radiology services at the University
of Michigan's teaching hospital.
- Conducted a preliminary study of work patterns and image use by clinicians
in two satellite settings: a) a primary care practice; and b) and orthopedic
surgery practice.
- Built and tested and evaluated an initial prototype tool for capture
and replay of gesture and voice annotations on a radiographic, image based
on Osiris II (an image manipulation package).
- Attended RSNA meeting in Chicage and received an in-depth demo from
a Siemens representative of their
digitial film reading workstation.
- Developed an initial analysis of the architecture for a toolkit that
supports session recording and reply in Multimedia environments.
- Published three papers, with three others "in the works."
- Set up infrastructure: hired programmer, acquired workstations, video
and sound recording and replay equipment, and C-Video software (for the
behavioral studies), looked at tech-transfer from a closely related project
(the UARC project, NSF cooperative agreement, IRI-9216848, Dan Atkins, PI).
Further details are available at the project web site,
http://www.sils.umich.edu/~weymouth/Medical-Collab/index.html
and especially at this year's progress report,
http://www.sils.umich.edu/~weymouth/Medical-Collab/report96.html
See the 1996 Progress Report for a list of graduate
students and papers.
Last modified on March 11, 1996. Terry
E Weymouth.
weymouth@umich.edu