Telestration: How Helena Mentis Applies Design Thinking to Surgery

Telestration: How Helena Mentis Applies Design Thinking to Surgery

Telestration: How Helena Mentis Applies Design Thinking to Surgery

Helena Mentis is the director of the Bodies in Motion Lab at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) with research spanning human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and medical informatics. During a recent visit to the Design Lab at UC San Diego, Mentis talked about her research on surgery in the operating room.

She examines the medical world through surgical instruments and the workflow inside the operating room. Mentis hones in on minimally invasive surgery and the reliance toward images.  She is particularly interested in how medical professionals see and share visual information in a collaborative fashion, which has grown over the past several years. She asks, “What happens if surgeons were given greater control over the image? What would happen to the workflow? Would it change anything?”

In one study at Thomas Hospital in London, surgeons were using a lot of pointing gestures to direct the operation. Confusion would arise and the surgeon would need to repeat his exact intention with others. This break in the workflow inspired Mentis’ team to ask: what if we were to build a touchless illustration system that responded to the surgeon’s gestures? Her team set out to build what she calls “telestration,” which enables surgeons to use gestures to illustrate their intentions through an interactive display.

During another operation, the surgeon encountered a soft bone and had to stop the procedure. As a result, the surgeon had take off their gloves to re-examine the tissue on the visual display. Mentis notes, “There is a tight coupling between images on display and feeling with the instrument in hand.” If the image on display could be more closely integrated with the workflow, would this save time in the operating room?After publishing her findings, people raved over how voice narration rather than gesture aided imaging and collaboration in surgery. Consequently Mentis asked, “If given the opportunity would doctors use voice or gesture?” The ensuing observations revealed that while doctors stated their preference for voice, gesture was more frequently used for shaping telestration images. While voice narration and gestures provided greater interaction with the image, surgeons actually spent more time in surgery. Mentis reasons, “There is more opportunity for collaborative discussion with the information.” Interestingly, this did add time to the overall operation, but it also yielded greater opportunities to uncover and discuss critical information.

About Helena Mentis, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Helena Mentis, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research contributes to the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and health informatics. She investigates how new interactive sensors can be integrated into the operating room to support medical collaboration and care. Before UMBC, she was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, held a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Microsoft Research Cambridge and the University of Cambridge, and was an ERCIM postdoctoral scholar at Mobile Life in Sweden. She received her Ph.D. in Information Sciences and Technology from Pennsylvania State University.

Helena Mentis is the director of the Bodies in Motion Lab at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) with research spanning human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and medical informatics. During a recent visit to the Design Lab at UC San Diego, Mentis talked about her research on surgery in the operating room.

She examines the medical world through surgical instruments and the workflow inside the operating room. Mentis hones in on minimally invasive surgery and the reliance toward images.  She is particularly interested in how medical professionals see and share visual information in a collaborative fashion, which has grown over the past several years. She asks, “What happens if surgeons were given greater control over the image? What would happen to the workflow? Would it change anything?”

In one study at Thomas Hospital in London, surgeons were using a lot of pointing gestures to direct the operation. Confusion would arise and the surgeon would need to repeat his exact intention with others. This break in the workflow inspired Mentis’ team to ask: what if we were to build a touchless illustration system that responded to the surgeon’s gestures? Her team set out to build what she calls “telestration,” which enables surgeons to use gestures to illustrate their intentions through an interactive display.

During another operation, the surgeon encountered a soft bone and had to stop the procedure. As a result, the surgeon had take off their gloves to re-examine the tissue on the visual display. Mentis notes, “There is a tight coupling between images on display and feeling with the instrument in hand.” If the image on display could be more closely integrated with the workflow, would this save time in the operating room?After publishing her findings, people raved over how voice narration rather than gesture aided imaging and collaboration in surgery. Consequently Mentis asked, “If given the opportunity would doctors use voice or gesture?” The ensuing observations revealed that while doctors stated their preference for voice, gesture was more frequently used for shaping telestration images. While voice narration and gestures provided greater interaction with the image, surgeons actually spent more time in surgery. Mentis reasons, “There is more opportunity for collaborative discussion with the information.” Interestingly, this did add time to the overall operation, but it also yielded greater opportunities to uncover and discuss critical information.

About Helena Mentis, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Helena Mentis, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research contributes to the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and health informatics. She investigates how new interactive sensors can be integrated into the operating room to support medical collaboration and care. Before UMBC, she was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, held a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Microsoft Research Cambridge and the University of Cambridge, and was an ERCIM postdoctoral scholar at Mobile Life in Sweden. She received her Ph.D. in Information Sciences and Technology from Pennsylvania State University.

Helena Mentis is the director of the Bodies in Motion Lab at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) with research spanning human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and medical informatics. During a recent visit to the Design Lab at UC San Diego, Mentis talked about her research on surgery in the operating room.

She examines the medical world through surgical instruments and the workflow inside the operating room. Mentis hones in on minimally invasive surgery and the reliance toward images.  She is particularly interested in how medical professionals see and share visual information in a collaborative fashion, which has grown over the past several years. She asks, “What happens if surgeons were given greater control over the image? What would happen to the workflow? Would it change anything?”

In one study at Thomas Hospital in London, surgeons were using a lot of pointing gestures to direct the operation. Confusion would arise and the surgeon would need to repeat his exact intention with others. This break in the workflow inspired Mentis’ team to ask: what if we were to build a touchless illustration system that responded to the surgeon’s gestures? Her team set out to build what she calls “telestration,” which enables surgeons to use gestures to illustrate their intentions through an interactive display.

During another operation, the surgeon encountered a soft bone and had to stop the procedure. As a result, the surgeon had take off their gloves to re-examine the tissue on the visual display. Mentis notes, “There is a tight coupling between images on display and feeling with the instrument in hand.” If the image on display could be more closely integrated with the workflow, would this save time in the operating room?After publishing her findings, people raved over how voice narration rather than gesture aided imaging and collaboration in surgery. Consequently Mentis asked, “If given the opportunity would doctors use voice or gesture?” The ensuing observations revealed that while doctors stated their preference for voice, gesture was more frequently used for shaping telestration images. While voice narration and gestures provided greater interaction with the image, surgeons actually spent more time in surgery. Mentis reasons, “There is more opportunity for collaborative discussion with the information.” Interestingly, this did add time to the overall operation, but it also yielded greater opportunities to uncover and discuss critical information.

About Helena Mentis, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Helena Mentis, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research contributes to the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and health informatics. She investigates how new interactive sensors can be integrated into the operating room to support medical collaboration and care. Before UMBC, she was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, held a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Microsoft Research Cambridge and the University of Cambridge, and was an ERCIM postdoctoral scholar at Mobile Life in Sweden. She received her Ph.D. in Information Sciences and Technology from Pennsylvania State University.

Read Next

How To Reduce Obesity Among Latino Children

How to Reduce Obesity among Latino Children, with Precision

UC San Diego and community collaborators receive $3 million grant to develop more community-centered, precision approaches to reducing adverse childhood events that lead to obesity, a nationwide problem

“Working with the Latino community, we want to create a family-based approach to improve individual and community resilience to stress and address the obesity epidemic,” said lead principal investigator Gary S. Firestein, MD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and ACTRI director.

Blanca Meléndrez, director of the Center for Community Health at UC San Diego and a co-principal investigator on the study with Eric Hekler, PhD, Design Lab member, professor and interim associate dean for community partnerships in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health, said that beyond determining which methods best promote resiliency and reduce obesity among children, researchers and community collaborators will seek to create interventions that can be delivered to different families that match a family’s unique circumstances and needs.
Anna McCowan Melanie McComsey Ucsd Design Lab

UK Markey Center and UCSD Seek to Improve Cancer Care with LAUNCH

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Americans living in rural areas are more likely to die of cancer than their counterparts in urban settings, which sets them apart from the many communities nationwide that have experienced a 20 percent decrease in cancer mortality over the past two decades. In Appalachia, the cancer picture is bleaker than in other rural parts of the country. Between 1969 and 2011, cancer incidence declined in every region of the country except rural Appalachia, and mortality rates soared.

This week (Monday, June 17th, 2019) an Innovation Studio workshop was held at the PRTC center announcing a program called LAUNCH.
Sd Design Trek Ucsd

Design Trek Brings San Diego Design Community Together

This past March, SD Design Trek took students and early-UX career professionals on a three-day showcase of design companies in San Diego to gain a firsthand look at what the local design community has to offer. The March 4 kickoff and showcase took place just down the hall from the Design Lab, in Atkinson Hall’s Auditorium. 

The event commenced with the words of keynote speaker, Amish Desai, who graduated from UCSD in 2003 with a Cognitive Science HCI degree and currently serves as the VP of Experiences at Moonshot. “[The talk] was about being design minded, in terms of design being much more than a craft and is actually a driver for business growth,” he says. “The idea is to instill some lessons I learned in the last 17 years as to why the importance of design is not just beautiful things but is also about doing experiments and making, driving cultural changes, creating experiences, analytics, and having business rigor.”
Ucsd Design Lab Mikael Walhström

Designer in Residence & Social Psychologist Mikael Wahlström Leads Projects to Explore Autonomous Ships

The Design Lab welcomed Mikael Wahlström as a Designer in Residence this past fall. Wahlström…

Design Lab Don Norman Healthcare Designforward

San Diego is Getting Serious About Healthcare Design

In June 2017, San Diego hosted two of the largest annual healthcare conventions - the…

Uc San Diego Design Lab Viasat

Viasat Invests in UC San Diego’s Design Lab

Viasat gift helps researchers provide guidance to engineering organizations on ways to implement a ‘design…

Back To Top