Voice Control for Patient Care Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Patients face difficulties navigating and using portable monitoring devices with text-based or graphical user interfaces, leading to potential misuse or abandonment, which can negatively impact their health and user experience.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a voice control system that allows users to interact with patient care devices using natural language, with speech recognition services to parse voice commands and provide audio guidance, enabling control and navigation without menus and allowing configuration for discrete voice commands and guidance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If text-based or graphical user interfaces are used for patient interaction, then information can be displayed and transmitted, but the interface becomes difficult to navigate and use for patients with mobility or dexterity issues
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical interaction required by graphical user interfaces (clicking, typing, scrolling) with a voice-based acoustic system. Patients can issue commands and receive information through speech recognition and audio output, eliminating the need for manual dexterity or visual navigation while maintaining full information access.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a voice interface as an intermediary between the patient and the monitoring device. This intermediary translates spoken commands into device operations and converts device information into spoken responses, bridging the gap between patient needs and device functionality without requiring direct interaction with complex graphical interfaces.
2Adaptability or versatility
If complex menus and interfaces are provided to enable full device functionality, then comprehensive control is available, but patients may use the device incorrectly or abandon it entirely
Solution Approach 1:
The voice interface enables patients to independently access and control all device functions through natural speech commands. The system responds to verbal requests with appropriate actions and information, allowing patients to self-navigate the device capabilities without requiring training on complex menu structures or visual interface elements.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of requiring patients to navigate through hierarchical menus to access functions, the system inverts the interaction model: patients simply state what they want to do in natural language, and the system interprets and executes the command. This reverses the traditional approach from patient-active-navigation to system-active-interpretation.
3Ease of operation
If voice control is implemented to simplify interaction, then ease of use improves, but the system complexity increases due to speech recognition integration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs speech recognition and text-to-speech services as intermediary components that handle the complexity of voice processing. These external services act as buffers between the simple voice interface and the complex device control logic, allowing the patient care device to maintain relative simplicity while providing sophisticated voice-based interaction capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for voice control of a patient care device are described. A patient care device receives an audio request from a user. The patient care device records the audio request. The patient care device transmits the audio request over a communication network to a speech recognition service, and in response receives, from the speech recognition service, a textual representation of the audio request. The patient care device matches the textual representation, using the computer processor, to a first command in a vocabulary of available commands, and in response performs the first command.