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To accommodate frequent emergencies, interruptions, and delays, hospital staff continually make and coordinate changes to the surgery schedule. The physical environment is an understudied aspect of coordination. The technical and social aspects of coordination in surgical suites have been described by prior studies. Based on a field study of four surgical suites in two large academic centers, the physical layout of hallways and rooms, and barriers and spaces around displays and key coordinators, support or fail to support the common information spaces used for coordination. The concept “information hotspots” represents how physical places and their characteristics facilitate coordination. An information hotspot is a place where people congregate to receive and provide information, public displays offer up-to-date information, and people with coordination roles are available to answer questions, resolve conflicts, and keep information up to date. The information hotspots concept helps designers to understand how information technology, the physical place, and the behavior of people together support workplace coordination. Design principles were developed based on the concept of information hotspots that should guide architectural considerations for coordination in dynamic environments such as hospitals.

Related Publications

Scupelli, P., Fussell, S. R., Kiesler, S., (2010 in press) Architecture and Information Technology as Factors in Surgical Suite Information Sharing and Coordination. Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Health Informatics Symposium.

Scupelli, P., Xiao, Y., Fussell, S.R., Kiesler, S., & Gross, M.D., (2010). Supporting Coordination in Surgical Suites: Physical Aspects of Common Information Spaces. CHI 2010 Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. NY: ACM Press.(pp. 1777-1787). 

Scupelli, P., (2009). Designing information hotspots for surgical suites: How architecture, artifacts, and people's behavior converge to support coordination. Ph.D. dissertation in Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. 

Scupelli, P., Kiesler, S., & Fussell, S. R., (2007). Using isovist views to study placement of large displays in natural settings. CHI ’07 Extended Abstracts (pp. 2645-2650). NY: ACM Press.