Context awareness and nomadic devices featuring advanced information visualization in clinical routine

Abstract

The demand for ubiquitous and efficient information delivery is increasing rapidly, as the majority of access to professional data, information and knowledge is increasingly relying on the use of technology. Mobile workers become more efficient, if equipped with access means similarly powerful to stationary workplaces. All types of work exhibiting inherently nomadic characteristics are even more affected by these developments. Healthcare personnel in a clinical environment are definitely one of the typical examples, where the access of information is vital and bound to location. Additionally the information needs to be processed in very short periods of time. For this purpose it is of great advantage to deploy advanced information visualization technologies in order to communicate larger amounts of data in a shorter period of time. In this work, we present an IT platform, which emerged from applications in the cultural heritage domain, that can be used to deliver context-aware services and advanced visualization of information to medical personnel in a clinical environment. The location combined with usage profiles for each member of the stuff are used to make the decision about the type and amount of information as well as the visualization type delivered to the handheld devices. Along with the description of the platform and its components, two application examples/medical use cases are presented.