A Smart Glass Telemedicine Application for Prehospital Communication: User-Centered Design Study

Background: Smart glasses have emerged as a promising solution for enhancing communication and care coordination among distributed medical teams. While prior research has explored the feasibility of using smart glasses to improve prehospital communication between emergency medical service (EMS) providers and remote physicians, a research gap remains in understanding the specific requirements and needs of EMS providers for smart glass implementation. Objective: This study aims to iteratively design and evaluate a smart glass application tailored for prehospital communication by actively involving prospective users in the system design process. Methods: Grounded in participatory design, the study consisted of 2 phases of design requirement gathering, rapid prototyping, usability testing, and prototype refinement. In total, 43 distinct EMS providers with diverse backgrounds participated in this 2-year long iterative design process. All qualitative data (eg, transcribed interviews and discussions) were iteratively coded and analyzed by at least 2 researchers using thematic analysis. Quantitative data, such as System Usability Scale (SUS) scores and feature ratings, were analyzed using statistical methods. Results: Our research identified challenges in 2 essential prehospital communication activities: contacting online medical control (OLMC) physicians for medical guidance and notifying receiving hospital teams of incoming patients. The iterative design process led to the identification of 5 key features that could potentially address the identified challenges: video call functionality with OLMC physicians, call priority indication for expedited OLMC contact, direct communication with receiving hospitals, multimedia patient information sharing, and touchless interaction methods for operating the smart glasses. The SUS score for our system design improved from a mean of 74.3 (SD 11.3) in the first phase (classified as good usability) to 80.3 (SD 13.1) in the second phase (classified as excellent usability). This improvement, along with consistently high ratings for other aspects (eg, willingness to use and feature design), demonstrated continuous enhancement of the system’s design across the 2 phases. Additionally, significant differences in SUS scores were observed between EMS providers in urban areas (median 85, IQR 76-94) and rural areas (median 72.5, IQR 66-83; Mann-Whitney U=43; P=.17), as well as between paramedics (median 72.5, IQR 70-80) and emergency medical technicians (median 85, IQR: 74-98; Mann-Whitney U=44.5; P=.13), suggesting that EMS providers in urban settings and those with less training in treating patients in critical conditions perceived the smart glass application as more useful and user-friendly. Finally, the study also identified several concerns regarding the adoption of the smart glass application, including technical limitations, environmental constraints, and potential barriers to workflow integration. Conclusions: Using a participatory design approach, this study provided insights into designing user-friendly smart glasses that address the current challenges EMS providers face in dynamic prehospital settings.