An investigation of finger versus stylus input in medical scenarios

An in-situ study on the routine work of clinicians at Graz University Hospital was carried out in order to evaluate the input method preferences. We conducted several experiments consisting of selection tasks on two different types of tablet PCs, with the end users in three experimental conditions: sitting, standing and walking. The results show that the medical staff performed better when using stylus operated device. In almost all tests, subjects performed the selection tasks significantly faster and more accurately (p < 0.001) with the stylus operated device, even though it had a smaller screen and therefore the targets were smaller. The only exception was the selection performance when seated, where no significant difference was found (p = 0.06). However, the error rate was significantly lower for stylus input for all experiment conditions. This result is also supported by the analysis of the questionnaires, where it was found that almost all subjects preferred stylus input.

1. Introduction

The importance of Information Technology (IT) in health care is growing rapidly. However, the daily interaction with computers in health care is not widely accepted yet by medical professionals. Most computers in hospitals are stationary PCs or laptops carried on ward round trolleys and are operated with mouse and keyboard. Current software for use in health care (e.g., patient documentation systems) is designed to be used with indirect pointing devices, such as a trackball or mouse.