Automation in Surgery: The Surgeons' Perspective on Human Factors Issues of Image-Guided Navigation

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Image-guided navigation (IGN) systems support the surgeon in navigating through the patients' anatomy. Previous research on IGN has focused on technical feasibility and clinical applications. Yet, as the introduction of IGN corresponds to a partial automation of the surgeon's task, well known issues of human-automation interaction might play a crucial role for the success of IGN as well. The present study represents a first attempt to assess the impact of IGN on four key issues of human automation-interaction, i.e., workload, situation awareness, trust, and skill degradation, from the surgeons' perspective. A nation-wide survey among 213 German surgeons from 94 different hospitals was conducted. Results revealed (1) a workload-shift due to IGN rather than a reduction of workload, (2) benefits of IGN with respect to situation awareness, (3) comparatively high levels of perceived reliability, trust and reliance, and (4) skill degradation as a possible risk, albeit only for inexperienced surgeons