Use of a see-through head-worn display of patient monitoring data to enhance anesthesiologists' response to abnormal clinical events

One obstacle to safety in the operating room is anesthesiologist distraction - having to shift attention back and forth from the patient to vital sign monitor while performing either routine or emergency procedures. The purpose of this study was to measure the decrease in anesthesiologist distraction made possible by using a head-mounted, see-through personal display (HMD) using retinal scanning technology. With the head-up display, they were able to focus their attention exclusively on the patient and the task at hand. The Nomad reduced the number of times the anesthesiologist had to shift their attention by a more than a third (17 times versus 58 times). This allowed them to spend more time focused on the patient.