User Cognition of Haptic/Tactile Stimulation in Telemedicine Settings

Abstract

With the ongoing pandemic, telemedicine is being used more than ever before. However, physicians are unable to conduct soft tissue physical examinations when they meet with their patients remotely. To assess this limitation, we propose a soft tissue physical examination procedure using wearable haptic gloves which will allow a physician to perform physical examinations remotely with the help of a nurse. Our sense of touch is active and the haptic gloves in our proposed procedure utilizes passive tactile feedback. This may result in the physician not being able to fully comprehend the tactile stimulation they receive from the wearable device. A potential workaround is to use have the physician appropriate the nurses’ remote hands using the Rubber Hand Illusion. In this study, the proposed procedure is simulated using an XY table developed to administer passive haptic/tactile feedback to a user. Users’ abilities to perceive objects within their own environments using both an active and passive mode of sensing is tested as well as the current ability of the experimental components to induce the Rubber Hand Illusion. After completing the initial set of experiments, we concluded that there is a significant performance difference between active and passive exploration highlighting the importance of researching the potential link between embodiment and improved passive touch perception. Additionally, the results gave us some insight on what improvements are needed to better simulate the proposed physical examination procedure. Based on these results, we can improve our equipment and determine if embodiment using the Rubber Hand Illusion can improve a users’ cognition of passive tactile/haptic stimulation in a future study.