gms | German Medical Science

25. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Audiologie

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Audiologie e. V.

01.03. - 03.03.2023, Köln

Patients’ voice as part of participative development within research

Meeting Abstract

  • presenting/speaker Jochen Denzinger - Iconstorm GmbH, Frankfurt/ Main, Germany
  • Gunnar Geisler - Advanced Bionics GmbH, European Research Center, Hannover, Germany
  • Raphael Koning - Advanced Bionics GmbH, European Research Center, Hannover, Germany
  • Maurice Riegler - Iconstorm GmbH, Frankfurt/ Main, Germany

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Audiologie e.V.. 25. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Audiologie. Köln, 01.-03.03.2023. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2023. Doc081

doi: 10.3205/23dga081, urn:nbn:de:0183-23dga0813

Published: March 1, 2023

© 2023 Denzinger et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.


Outline

Text

Frame: “Augmented Auditory Intelligence” (A2I) is an ongoing, three years BMBF-funded research project with seven partners from both, academia and industry [1]. It aims for a new multisensory platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze health data collected in and on the ear to improve audiological, as well as cardiological care processes.

A central research question of A2I is the acceptance of AI-augmented systems in the healthcare sector, more precisely the design of human-machine collaboration and the transparency of decision-making. Thus one important area of the project are state-of-the-art methodologies from design and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to develop human-centered technologies.

Baseline: Despite given and established standards such as the User-Centered Design process from DIN EN ISO 9241-210:2010 [2] and corresponding methods, and despite the regulatory needs for usability engineering [3], in our domain these often qualitative approaches are rarely integrated within early development steps and requirements analysis.

Participatory workshop: In November 2022 we organized a participatory workshop with 11 participants, ten of which wearing CI devices, in AB’s European Research Center. One of the participants was the father of a teenaged patient and one patient was visually impaired as well. In the first section of the 1.5 hrs workshop, the participants had been asked to identify their personal gains and pains according to a predefined patient journey and their individual experience. They individually formulated their feedback and mapped the resulting post-its to the respective steps of the patient journey on a printed poster. Afterwards all jointly discussed the most important aspects together in the group (Figure 1 [Fig. 1]). The second part used card sorting as a method to explore the participants’ needs: A range of nine value propositions and possible features of hearing systems and CI devices from the A2I project were presented and sorted by the participants in a hierarchical order according to the respective value. Contrary to our expectations, the participants quickly and unanimously agreed on an order.

Results and benefits: Any of the workshop participants showed high motivation and reported independently that they were very pleased that their voice was already being heard early in the development process.

The results underline that non-functional, psychological aspects and fears are a massive driver.

Structuring the given features mirrored these results and showed highest ranks for…

1.
Improving hearing quality and situational hearing.
2.
Applying own adjustments via a usable and simple app.
3.
Social functions as common exchange, learning groups, and shared trainings.

A retrospective of the approach shows that we were able to gain early insights in a very efficient way that otherwise would have been incorporated into work of developers at a much later stage.


References

1.
Augmented Auditive Intelligence. [Last access: 2023 Dec 13]. Available from: https://a2i-med.net/en/ External link
2.
DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung. DIN EN ISO 9241-210:2010 Ergonomie der Mensch-System-Interaktion: Teil 210: Prozess zur Gestaltung gebrauchstauglicher interaktiver Systeme (ISO 9241-210:2010). Berlin: DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung; 2010.
3.
DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung. DIN EN 62366-1 (VDE 0750-241-1):2017-07 Medizinprodukte – Teil 1: Anwendung der Gebrauchstauglichkeit auf Medizinprodukte. Berlin: Beuth Verlag; 2017.