EP4136498A1

EP4136498A1 - Medical device having a display and having a processing unit, and method therefor

Info

Publication number: EP4136498A1
Application number: EP21719594.0A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Jochen POPP
Original assignee: Fresenius Medical Care Deutschland GmbH
Current assignee: Fresenius Medical Care Deutschland GmbH
Priority date: 2020-04-15
Filing date: 2021-04-15
Publication date: 2023-02-22
Also published as: DE102020204785A1; CN115605800A; US20230142997A1; WO2021209534A1

Abstract

The invention relates to a medical device (1) having a display (DIS) and having a processing unit (CPU), and a method therefor, wherein the processing unit (CPU) is suitable for capturing states of one or more technical units of the medical device (1), wherein the processing unit (CPU) is furthermore set up to control the display (DIS) on the basis of captured states in order to output states of the medical device (1), characterized in that the display (DIS) is an autostereographic display and in that the processing unit (CPU) controls the display (DIS) on the basis of an assessment of captured states, in such a way that a first state is visually highlighted in relation to a 3-D representation while a second state is not visually highlighted in relation to a 3-D representation, the method including the steps of: • displaying (200a) the first state, • displaying (200b) the second state, • receiving a user input in relation to the displayed first state (300).

Description

Medical device with a display and with a processing unit and method therefor

The invention relates to a medical device with a display and with a processing unit and a method therefor.

background

In medical technology devices in general, but in particular in dialysis machines, more and more sensors are used, the measurement results of which are used to improve the treatment carried out. This is due both to general technical developments (smaller, cheaper sensors) and to increasingly differentiated demands on treatment (patient individuality).

In particular, the increasing data processing capacity of modern processors in the form of machine-based "intelligent" data evaluation with a technical effect on treatment processes carried out is increasingly being used in medicine , in the improvement of treatment results. This also promotes an increasing accumulation of sensors and related data.

While in other branches of industry the automation of the feedback of the extended data evaluation on the devices replaces humans as a necessary interaction element, medical-technical treatment devices are still dependent on human operation.

The main reasons are patient safety, the relative unpredictability of complications with highly individual patient and environmental requirements, and the high number patient-oriented treatment options and the psychosomatic effects of human-human interaction, including traceability and trust.

This will be explained in more detail below using the example of dialysis treatments. In daily practice, the staff (nursing staff or medical staff) must repeat, frequently, irregularly, usually manually, and usually with the inclusion of additional material / equipment (e.g. consumables such as Syringes, tubes or medical devices such as infusion pumps) intervene in the course of the treatment.

In addition to less time-critical (but error-prone and complex) device interactions such as calibration, functional testing, upgrading / dismantling of disposable items and cleaning of the devices, between the connection and disconnection of the patient from the device there are the health-critical and immediate inputs of various physiological and machine-related data with regard to the sequential ongoing treatment steps, as well as reactions to warnings / critical situations / notes / irregularities. For this purpose, treatment-controlling inputs to the dialysis machine are usually made directly on the dialysis machine. The most common way of doing this is to combine the display of information with the corresponding input options. The information display sometimes also allows treatment-relevant parameters for monitoring and operating instructions to be displayed.

This means that a large amount of information is presented essentially at the same time, whereby it is difficult to distinguish the relevance. In addition, the presentation of information in the differentiation from an (expected) input on a touchscreen represents a problem in human-machine interaction.

This situation gives rise to various problems which, on the one hand, can lead to a delayed reaction because relevant information was not recognized in good time, or else leads to a potential incorrect input of parameters or instructions. Both are suitable to endanger the well-being of the patient, but at least this leads to the (temporal) efficiency being impaired both from the point of view of the patient and from the point of view of the medical facility. This directly disadvantages the safety of the patient, the efficiency of the treatment, the safety of the machines, the efficient use of consumables and can also increase the workload of the staff.

Another disadvantage is that users of such devices require a great deal of training in order to be instructed in their correct use. This time requirement is not always available.

Even without the influence of big data and related things in medicine, the overloading of device operation with information is a known problem.

The known state of the art, which attempts to solve this problem, causes inherent additional problems and is not up to the difficulties of the trend towards more information.

Common approaches (and resulting inadequacies) are contrasting with colors (subjective coding, color blindness not addressed, lighting / display dependency, additional information through color legend), division of the operation into several (context-dependent) displays (more interaction required, more prone to input errors, unnecessary Effort in routine processes / "clicking through") and additional display of operating instructions (even more information, additional potential for confusing instructions / information / operating elements).

However, none of these measures are suitable for sustainably improving human-machine interaction.

Against this background, it is an object of the invention to provide solutions which make it possible to provide more efficient and patient-safe operation of medical devices. The object is achieved by a method for a medical device with a display and with a processing unit, the processing unit being suitable for detecting states of one or more technical units of the medical device, the processing unit also being set up on the basis of detected states of the display control in order to output states of the medical device, characterized in that the display is an autostereographic display, and that the processing unit controls the display based on an evaluation of detected states in such a way that a first state is visually highlighted in relation to a 3D representation, while a second state is not visually emphasized with respect to a 3D representation. The method includes the step of displaying the first state, the step of displaying the second state, and the step of receiving user input relating to the displayed first state.

The object is also achieved by a medical device with a display and with a processing unit, the processing unit being able to detect states of one or more technical units of the medical device, the processing unit also being set up to control the display on the basis of detected states in order to Output states of the medical device, characterized in that the display is an autostereographic display, and that the processing unit controls the display based on an evaluation of the detected states in such a way that a first state is visually highlighted in relation to a 3D representation, while a second State is not visually highlighted in relation to a 3D representation.

Further advantageous configurations are the subject matter of the respective dependent claims, the figures and the description.

The invention is explained in more detail below with reference to a drawing and exemplary embodiments. The drawing is a schematic representation and is not true to scale. The drawing does not restrict the invention in any way. Show it:

1 shows a schematic representation of status displays in relation to a user according to embodiments of the invention,

FIG. 2 shows a schematic illustration of elements of embodiments of a medical device according to embodiments of the invention, and FIG

3 shows a schematic flow diagram according to embodiments of the invention.

The invention will be illustrated in more detail below with reference to the figures. It should be noted that different aspects are described that can be used individually or in combination. That is, any aspect can be used with different embodiments of the invention unless explicitly shown as a pure alternative.

Furthermore, for the sake of simplicity, reference is generally only made to one entity in the following. Unless explicitly noted, the invention can also have several of the entities concerned. In this respect, the use of the words “a”, “an” and “an” is to be understood only as an indication that at least one entity is used in a simple embodiment.

Insofar as methods are described below, the individual steps of a method can be arranged and / or combined in any order, unless the context explicitly results in something different. Furthermore, the processes can be combined with one another, unless otherwise expressly indicated.

Figures with numerical values are generally not to be understood as exact values, but also include a tolerance of +/- 1% up to +/- 10%.

Insofar as standards, specifications or the like are named in this application, at least the standards, specifications or the like applicable on the filing date are always used in Referenced. That is, if a standard / specification etc. is updated or replaced by a successor, the invention can also be applied to this.

Various embodiments are shown in the figures.

In an exemplary method according to embodiments of the invention, a medical device 1 is used. The medical device 1 has, for example, a display DIS and a processing unit CPU. Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 2, further components can be integrated (as shown) or functionally connected in the medical device 1. These components include sensors S1, actuators A1, interfaces IO, input devices HID.

Sensors S1 can, for example, be sensors for determining pressure, pressure differences, temperature, pH values, the concentration of certain substances in gases or liquids, volume meters, volume flow meters, etc.

Actuators Al can be e.g. pumps, valves, elements for flow control, etc.

A processing unit CPU can have one or more microprocessors, microcontrollers, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), field programmable gate array (FPGA), etc. The processing unit can also be an arrangement of several units in a master-slave combination.

An input device HID can be a suitable device for recognizing inputs from a user U. For example, reference is made here to a surface of a touch screen (TS), a keyboard, a mouse, a joystick, a graphics tablet, gesture recognition (e.g. by means of a camera).

The interface IO can have a local interface for wireless / wired communication with a remote database, display and / or input unit. For example, via a near-field communication system, such as ZigBee, LAN, DECT, Bluetooth, etc., data relating to States of sensors S1 / actuators Al forwarded and / or remote user inputs can be obtained by means of a remote HID.

The processing unit CPU is suitable for recording the states of one or more technical units, e.g. sensors S1 and / or states of actuators A1, of the medical technical device 1 in a step 100.

The processing unit CPU is also set up to control the display DIS on the basis of recorded states in order to output states of the medical device 1.

The display DIS is designed as an autostereographic display. Autostereographic displays DIS make it possible to present three-dimensional representations to a user U without glasses.

The processing unit CPU can now - based on an evaluation of detected states - control the display DIS in such a way that a first state ZI is visually highlighted in relation to a 3D representation, while a second state ZN is visually not highlighted in relation to a 3D representation is as sketched in FIG.

For this purpose, the method according to the invention has a step of displaying 200a of the first state ZI and a step of displaying 200b of the second state ZN.

The identification as step 200a, 200b is only due to the logical differentiation. This means that the steps can also be combined in one step or carried out one after the other / alternately. The processing is based on the hardware used.

The medical device can now receive an input from a user U, for example by means of a local input device HID or by means of an interface IO. This user input 300 relates to the displayed first state. In one embodiment of the invention, step 100 also includes the detection of a warning or alarm message 100, the detected warning or alarm message being displayed as the first state ZI in step 200a.

This means that warnings and / or relevant interaction elements can be highlighted.

For example, in the case of critical warnings (sudden change in pressure, access needle leakage, blood in the dialyzer, etc.), which must be responded to immediately by input on the display, - the warning message 200a with depth effect can be displayed as status ZI and thus set off from the background.

In the background, treatment-relevant parameters can continue to be displayed in step 200b as state ZI. These other parameters can nevertheless be relevant for assessing the reaction.

In particular, the areas of a display DIS, which have to be "touched" e.g. to confirm the warning and / or to enter relevant parameter changes, can be shown in the foreground even before the warning message itself.

As a result, relevant interaction options are immediately visible, confusion with other input options is excluded and potentially relevant other parameters can be viewed before an interaction.

As the warnings can be responded to better and faster, this increases patient safety and the efficiency of treatment and reduces device downtime due to automatic interruptions and the disruption of people with persistent audiovisual warnings.

Without loss of generality, the displayed first state ZI can relate to a first step of an operating method and the second displayed state ZN can relate to a step of the operating method following the first step, which are not shown separately in the flowchart. For example, an assessment of the input can be carried out in step 400 and, depending on the input, an action (e.g. with regard to an actuator and / or a confirmation of a warning message) is carried out in step 600, whereupon e.g. a state previously shown as method step ZN now is highlighted as state ZI, or the method branches to step 700 and an action (for example in relation to an actuator and / or a confirmation of a warning message) is carried out, whereupon the method returns to step 100. Many variations can be considered here without restricting the generality.

This means that a chronological sequence of operating steps / treatment steps in spatial depth can be displayed.

The time sequence of the individual treatment processes ZI, ZN can be represented symbolically and / or as text. The order can be indicated by differences in the depth of the room. This means that several process steps can, for example, be displayed at different depths t according to their sequence. This means that a procedural step ZI that is closer in time is shown, for example, spatially before a temporally subsequent procedural step Z2 ... ZN. Alternatively or additionally, however, the currently running process according to ZI can also be displayed in the foreground of the display DIS, while the last completed treatment steps (increasingly) can continue to be displayed in the background according to ZI ... ZN.

Immediately pending processes can become progressively more prominent as the remaining time for execution decreases, until they are completely shown in the foreground when initiated as a current process. This can be done on different time scales (e.g. initiation-upgrading-patient connection-treatment-patient separation-cleaning-function test or within the cleaning as individual cleaning steps), also displayed in parallel.

This chronological sequence can be displayed separately or in addition to the other display.

This enables the user to navigate through time. In particular, the time relationship between the current process and the overall treatment is thus apparent to the user U. The operator U is hereby put in a position to make preparations for upcoming treatment steps (e.g. provision of material) and to devote the attention of other patients to other patients when displaying foreseeable, risk-free processes that are initially pending. On the other hand, the operator U is also put in a position to devote his attention to future processes that are risky.

The patient being treated can also adjust to upcoming changes in the treatment steps and prepare and / or relax if no upcoming changes are displayed.

For example, this makes it possible to display instructions for manual changes to the medical device 1.

In particular, when equipping / dismantling consumables (hoses, dialyzers, etc.), but also in the event of irregularities during treatment, the personnel must manually interact with components of the medical device 1. This is instructed and assisted on the autostereographic display DIS by a 3D display of the affected parts as state ZI (e.g. in contrast to the 2D representation of the entire machine / non-relevant parts according to state ZN).

Since the instructed actions on the medical device 1 do not usually take place over a large area, but also in a room-depth manner (laying the hose from one side to the other, opening a clamp around a hose, shaking the dialyzer, etc.), the correct implementation can be carried out by imitation the displayed instruction can be ensured without prior training.

This enables such actions to be carried out by inexperienced staff or - for example in the case of home care - by the patient himself. The actions themselves can be carried out faster and more error-resistant and the resulting patient / staff injury risk and material consumption can be reduced. For example, this also enables relevant treatment parameters to be entered.

In this way, information areas and input areas can only be optically highlighted (often only the only) parameter (s) relevant to the current treatment step by means of a depth effect as state ZI. This is done as an intuitive contrast to the passive / currently irrelevant display and control elements according to a state ZN.

It can thus be achieved that more information can be shown on the display DIS without the user orientation suffering during the interaction. In particular, this represents an additional context (that of the current relevance) which enables the correct operation of the medical device 1 even without understanding the text displays / icons, or at least supports them.

In a further embodiment of the invention, the first state ZI is a time with respect to a currently executed method or method step of the medical device 1. Time is to be understood both as a lead time, e.g. when preparing a treatment, as the elapsed time of a process step of the treatment process or as the remaining time of a process step of the treatment process, without being limited to this list.

In one embodiment of the invention, the first state ZI is shown with depth effect on the display DIS, the depth effect t being dependent on the value of the assigned state ZI. The value can be dependent, for example, on a temporal progress of the procedural step of the treatment process, an already achieved (measured) progress, e.g. withdrawal of a certain amount of fluid, the value of a measured physiological variable (e.g. blood pressure) and / or the deviation from a preset value (e.g. deviation from the target blood pressure), etc.

Furthermore, the display 200a of the first state ZI can also be used for user guidance. In particular, displayed surface elements of the display DIS for display and user input with regard to a state can then also be identical. In particular, the possible user input can also be restricted to surface elements of the display DIS, those of the display 200a serve for the first state ZI, while surface elements of the display DIS, which are used for the display 200b of the second state Z2, do not allow any user input.

The invention also allows user guidance when entering sequence-independent parameters.

In contrast to e.g. treatment parameters, digital forms with many individual entries must also be filled out in an interchangeable order when operating the device, e.g. when entering configuration parameters. Such parameters are usually copied from a template and are entered in full on a single advertisement or in a sequence of individual advertisements with respective confirmation of the entries.

This is either confusing (one display) and therefore error-prone and time-consuming, or interaction-intensive (thus also time-consuming and error-prone). In the context of the invention, input fields can be shown highlighted in depth as states ZI ... ZN one after the other (after inputting an input is continued). It can optionally be provided that only correspondingly highlighted states ZI can be operated in step 300.

This combines the simultaneous display of all parameters to be entered with the guided entry of individual input windows without requiring additional interaction. In addition, the order of the highlighted fields / parameters suggests a uniform template from which the values can be read.

This saves input time, reduces the amount of interaction required, avoids input errors, and reduces the effort required by the staff to operate the system.

Messages with no direct need for action, which recur but are not acute, cover at least part of the display on common displays until they are acknowledged.

In the course of the invention, the user U can instead be notified of a time-increasing depth display of a corresponding symbol when necessary conditions occur. If the triggering conditions are eliminated, the corresponding message (s) can (automatically) be moved to the background (status Z2 ... ZN) or the message (s) can / can be deleted, ie it will / will not be more displayed.

Alternatively, the user can downgrade the messages (or corresponding symbols) back to the background (i.e. the depth display is reduced) before they appear completely in the foreground without having taken care of the causes. This can be understood in a similar way to the "snooze" function of an alarm clock.

This enables the perception of non-acute messages without affecting / interrupting the current display. With regard to patient safety, the course of treatment, etc., more relevant device interactions of the user, can thus be continued undisturbed and the user himself decides when to react to less important messages.

In the case of a normal course, in particular in the case of an error-free course and / or after the treatment, the display DIS can be used for the most part as an idle display. In this case, data that are no further treatment-relevant are primarily shown for the staff U, but e.g. entertainment media for the patient.

The autostereographic function of the DIS display can be used in this version to display treatment-relevant monitoring parameters for a user U at the same time, parallel to the 2D display, e.g. of a rest video, offset in depth. This depth effect can be designed in such a way that it is noticeable to a user U, who is at a different distance from the display DIS than a patient, without being perceived as annoying by the patient.

Without restricting the generality, preparatory steps, such as a self-test of functions of the medical device 1, a self-calibration, etc. can be provided in step 50 in order to put the medical device 1 into a working state for treating a patient. Furthermore, without restricting the generality, follow-up steps, such as checking actuators / sensors, venting, closing valves / openings, emptying collecting / storage containers, etc., can be provided in step 800 in order to put the medical device 1 into an idle state offset.

Without loss of generality, the medical device 1 can be a dialysis machine.

The medical device 1 can in particular be suitable for kidney dialysis, and in particular for at least one of peritoneal dialysis, hemofiltration, hemodiafiltration or hemoperfusion.

Alternatively or additionally, the medical device 1 can be suitable for liver dialysis, and in particular for at least one of apheresis, single pass albumin dialysis, molecular adsorbents recirculation system.

In embodiments of the invention it can also be provided that the medical device 1 also provides a display with contactless input. In particular, it can be provided that inputs in step 300 with regard to the first state ZI can be made without contact.

Here, operating elements that are shown in the depth of the room as status ZI can be triggered without contact by inputting into the room in which the image appears (in front of the actual display DIS). In addition, the triggering of non-spatially displayed elements in accordance with state ZN, e.g. by normally touching the display DIS, can be excluded.

This is advantageous with regard to hygienic aspects (germ transfer) in the operation of medical devices 1. In addition, a restriction of the readability of the display DIS due to manual soiling is avoided. Contactless input methods or input devices HID can be based, for example, on radar, lidar, air flow, cameras and NFC, without being restricted to a specific technology.

The invention solves the present problems through the use of room depth-dependent distinctions in the representation of various elements on the display DIS. The representation generated is thus a 3D image, the depth property t of which is intuitively understandable (since it corresponds to the usual perception of spatial, stereoscopic, vision) additional information is integrated and at the same time selectively contrasted. For this, use is made directly of the physiology of the human eye, in that the contrasting of the information displayed, corresponding to the different depth display, takes place selectively through the different focusing within the framework of the accommodation of the eye.

This allows the quantity of information presented to be increased on the same area of the display DIS. This also allows the presentation of display elements to be prioritized according to context-dependent relevance. In this way it can be ensured that, despite a large amount of information displayed, the flow of information perceived as valent remains restricted according to the capacities of the user.

For the technology to be used within the scope of the invention for the 3D display without additional equipment (i.e. without glasses), that is to say autostereography, various technologies can be used for the display DIS.

One possibility is to generate two different images (one for each eye of the viewer) by using beam-splitting display geometry. Alternatively, this can be achieved by integrating lenses and prisms in the display DIS.

Another possibility is the combination of LCD displays and collimation and corresponding (scanning) background lighting. A parallax barrier with a subdivision of the display pixels into right / left (with regard to the eyes) sub-pixels can also be used.

In a simple implementation, the desired effect can also be achieved with an overlap of several (transparent) displays (one per depth level) with separately controllable transmission properties.

Claims

Requests

1. A method for a medical device (1) with a display (DIS) and with a processing unit (CPU), wherein the processing unit (CPU) is suitable for detecting states of one or more technical units of the medical device (1), the Processing unit (CPU) is further set up to control the display (DIS) on the basis of recorded states in order to output states of the medical device (1), characterized in that the display (DIS) is an autostereographic display, and that the processing unit (CPU) is based on an evaluation of detected states controls the display (DIS) in such a way that a first state is visually highlighted in relation to a 3D representation, while a second state is visually not highlighted in relation to a 3D representation, the method comprising the steps:

• Displays (200a) the first state,

• display (200b) of the second state,

• Receiving user input relating to the displayed first state (300).

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of recognizing a warning or alarm message (100), wherein the recognized warning or alarm message is displayed as the first state (200a).

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the displayed first state relates to a first step of an operating method and the second displayed state relates to a step of the operating method following the first step.

4. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the first state is a time with respect to a currently executed method or method step of the medical device (1).

5. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the first state with depth effect is shown on the display (DIS), while a second state without depth effect is shown on the display (DIS).

6. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the first state with depth effect is shown on the display (DIS), the depth effect being dependent on the value of the assigned state.

7. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the first state is used for user guidance.

8. The method according to claim 7, characterized in that surface elements of the display for display and user input are identical with respect to a state.

9. Medical device (1) with a display (DIS) and with a processing unit (CPU), wherein the processing unit (CPU) is suitable to record states of one or more technical units of the medical device (1), wherein the processing unit (CPU ) is also set up to control the display (DIS) on the basis of recorded states in order to output states of the medical device (1), characterized in that the display (DIS) is an autostereographic display, and the processing unit (CPU) is based on an evaluation detected states controls the display (DIS) in such a way that a first state is visually highlighted in relation to a 3D representation, while a second state is visually not highlighted in relation to a 3D representation.

10. Medical device (1) according to claim 9, characterized in that the first state relates to a warning or alarm message.

11. The medical device (1) according to claim 9, characterized in that the first state relates to a first step of an operating method and the second state relates to a step of the operating method following the first step.

12. Medical device (1) according to one of the preceding claims 9 to 11, characterized in that the first state is used for user guidance.

13. Medical device (1) according to one of the preceding claims 9 to 11, characterized in that the first state is a remaining time of a currently executed method or method step.

14. Medical device (1) according to one of the preceding claims 9 to 13, characterized in that the medical device is a dialysis machine.

15. Medical device (1) according to one of the preceding claims 9 to 14, characterized in that the display (DIS) is a touch screen (TS).

16. Medical device (1) according to one of the preceding claims 9 to 15, characterized in that the first state is shown with depth effect on the display (DIS), while a second state without depth effect is shown on the display (DIS).

17. Medical device (1) according to one of the preceding claims 8 to 16, characterized in that the device also provides a display with contactless input.

18. Medical device (1) according to claim 17, characterized in that inputs relating to the first state can be made without contact.