Tom Owen

This paper presents an exploration of how UK radiologists interact with VUI systems and peripherals when authoring diagnostic reports. We conducted a laboratory study with 10 practicing clinical radiologists to investigate the ways in which radiologists utilise speech-based technology to construct, edit and proof their work by having them report on real-world anonymised medical studies on camera. A sample of the participants also participated in interviews in which their data was collaboratively analysed and examined to offer deeper insight into the realism and generalisability of our findings and conclusions. We conclude that better training should be given to radiologists on how VUI systems work, and further investigation should be carried out on the best ways to interact with Speech To Text systems in safety critical environments.

This paper investigates patterns of communication and interaction in radiology departments by utilising ethnographic and ethnomethodological techniques. We conducted 12 sessions of observations with accompanying interviews in the practitioners natural working environment, and used this to construct a model of how a report is authored from an outsider perspective. These observations revealed that practitioners have a distinct way of interacting with speech recognition systems that is unlike traditional interaction with Voice User Interfaces, that there are a myriad of ways of communicating a result to peers that are dependent on context and tacit knowledge, and that reports are rarely completed without some form of cognitive interruption in the authoring stage. We finish by recommending a codified framework for guidance on communicating results that builds on evidence-based findings tailored specifically to radiology practitioners.

Rare disease patients face a long, arduous process to obtain a correct diagnosis. This often involves multiple misdiagnoses, leading to undue treatments and surgeries; patients are left feeling unheard by their healthcare providers and are even isolated from their peers who ‘just don’t understand’. Research to support clinicians in diagnosing rare disease patients has made great strides. However, little research aims to support the patients through this challenging time; and those that do, demonstrate minimal patient input in the design process. This is the first paper that uses methodologically robust patient driven design of pre-diagnostic technologies for rare disease patients. We conducted two workshops with rare disease patients to design a probe technology and subsequently evaluated the probe using a questionnaire. This revealed that rare disease patients predominantly wanted clinician communication aids (90.5%) and social support (61.9%) from technology, rather than the informational support that is typical with patient technology.