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The performance of a newly developed mobile hands‐free context‐aware communications system in a hospital environment
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 119, Issue 5, pp. 3351-3351 (2006); (1 page)
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Add to FacebookThis paper characterizes the effect of hospital noise conditions on a mobile communications system developed for a research trial in a Johns Hopkins Hospital nursing unit. The system provides an alternative to telephones and overhead paging in hopes of reducing the amount of noise on the hospital unit. Benefits of this system over current similar solutions include a completely hands free approach using a computerized voice agent and a design that addresses privacy concerns to comply with HIPAA requirements. The nurses were happy with the system and bypassed the phones and overhead paging in preference of their headsets. However, during the system trial, the effect of noise on the automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine from sources like alarms, medical equipment, and wind noise from mobile users was an issue. Utterance tests were run using a variety of different Bluetooth headsets to measure the impact of various noise sources, S/N, and noise reduction algorithms on ASR performance. Common noise reduction methods were not helpful for the type of noise encountered, suggesting that solutions such as noise robust speech systems and noise reduction with adaptive microphone arrays currently being researched will be of great importance to future systems of this kind.
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