In-situ eye-tracking of emergency physician result review.

Optimized retrieval of test results is important to patient care and patient safety. The time during which a physician is retrieving results is a vital aspect of the diagnostic process since it is when the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed or the differential is adjusted. Better characterization of the time spent while results are displayed allows for more accurate and appropriate study of this human-computer interaction and visualization in future studies. Using screen-recording and eye-tracking software, this study's primary objective was to determine the time spent by physicians (1) displaying lab results on the screen, (2)looking at lab results, and (3) fixating on specific values in a live clinical setting. We performed in-situ eye tracking with retrospective glances and time on task measurement. A total of 6171 minutes of data were collected, with mean individual lab result screen display time of 34.7 seconds, mean viewing time of 13.9 seconds, and mean fixation time of 9.9 seconds. We found that time spent looking at specific data is only small fraction of time data is shown onscreen.