Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
Fall 1-31-2009
Degree Name
Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering - (M.S.)
Department
Biomedical Engineering
First Advisor
Arijit K. Sengupta
Second Advisor
Richard A. Foulds
Third Advisor
Max Roman
Fourth Advisor
Hans Raj Chaudhry
Fifth Advisor
Sergei Adamovich
Abstract
Auditory alarms in medical equipments perform considerably below their optimal level. Concern has been expressed about the quality of medical alarms by a large number of researchers in recent years. A detailed literature survey on the medical alarm related problems has been carried out. Hospital visits were made to obtain real life information and data of alarm sounds in various type of monitors used in OR and ICU. A laboratory experiment has been conducted on selected melodic alarm sounds. These melodic alarm sounds are being implemented in medical equipments and the idea of design is proposed in ISO / IEC 60601-1-8. The tests were computer-administered and participated by 13 volunteers. Initially, volunteers were trained with the individual alarm sounds and the physiological cause of the alarm. Subsequently, they were tested for their learnability of the alarm sounds in the presence and absence of background noise and the results were compared. The presence of background noise did not have much effect on the correct identification rate. However, the confusion between the alarms sounds was significantly higher when background noise was present. Additionally the volunteers rated each alarm sound in terms of annoyance and urgency factor. Statistically significant correlation was found between the urgency rating and the annoyance rating of the alarm sounds.
Recommended Citation
Philip, Elizbha, "Evaluation of medical alarm sounds" (2009). Theses. 293.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/293
