Requirements for a Proposed Distributed Attention System for Supporting Awareness of Omissions in Healthcare

Noticing errors of omission can be challenging in complex, distributed processes. A prime example is outpatient care, where multiple distributed processes require attention. Teams must pay attention to patients currently in the clinic, to processes happening in the background, and to potential omissions in those processes. Detecting possible omissions may be supported with software, serving as a distributed attention system by guiding the team’s attention to important areas. However, to ensure the software supports rather than disrupts attention, proper user requirements must be defined. This paper presents our study to identify high-level user interaction requirements for software planned to support attention to omissions in Chronic Heart Failure treatment. We interviewed outpatient clinic team members to identify information needs for addressing possible omissions, and how notifications should fit with team communication patterns. The findings are discussed in terms of high-level requirements for effective functioning of teams of humans and software agents.