Designing man-machine interactions for mobile clinical systems: MET triage support using Palm handhelds

The Mobile Emergency Triage (MET) system is a clinical triage support system that aids physicians in making triage decisions as to whether a child presenting in the Emergency Department of a hospital with a specific pain complaint should be discharged to the family physician, needs to be admitted for further investigation/observation, or requires urgent specialist consult. The system’s mobile component is designed to work on a Palm handhelds. This paper presents our experience and discusses some of our original solutions with regards to designing man-machine interactions for mobile clinical support systems. Specific interactions adopted in the MET design that are discussed in the paper were created in consultations with potential end users and tested at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.