Defining information requirements for physician training and decision support of acid-base disorders in intensive care

Determining information requirements for tasks with distributed data in complex work environments is challenging. Well-defined requirements can help inform the design of decision support systems and identify training needs. Multiple methods should be employed to discover apparent and latent information requirements and available information that is not used in the observed environment. Managing acid-base balance in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is presented as an example of the approach in the medical domain. Patient cases are often used to teach physicians how to interpret acid-base data. Current scenarios do not incorporate the extent of knowledge necessary in practice. Specifically, they do not represent complex disorders often seen in ICUs. This paper reviews acid-base balance and the tools available for tracking it, and defines a set of information requirements to inform the design of decision support systems and acid-base clinical training scenarios for ICUs.