Listening to music: Using music perception to improve auditory alarms in medical devices

International audience; Healthcare delivery requires effective communication-both within teams and increasingly with medical devices used for monitoring patients. Auditory alarms hold great potential as useful tools for conveying dynamic information about a patient?s physiological state, as well as the preparedness of medical devices crucial to safety and well-being. Despite their importance the design of auditory alarms has often been undertaken without consideration for human factors considerations surrounding their actual use in hospitals. Consequently, problems with noise, alarm confusion, annoyance, and alarm fatigue are endemic. Through connections with an international consortium of health care professionals, human factors experts, and researchers in ergonomics, my team is currently building on our expertise in auditory perception and sound synthesis to explore improvements to traditional auditory alarms. Specifically, we are using lessons learned from analysis of musical sounds and musical compositions to craft alarms better suited for the dynamic, intensive, and above all mission- critical nature of modern hospitals. This talk will outline our broad theoretical framework, as well as review specific findings of relevance to the auditory alarm community.