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Expert Evaluation of a Spoken Dialogue System in a Clinical Operating Room

With the emergence of new technologies, the surgical working environment becomes increasingly complex and comprises many medical devices which have to be monitored and controlled. With the aim of improving productivity and reducing the workload for the operating staff, we have developed an Intelligent Digital Assistant for Clinical Operating Rooms (IDACO) which allows the surgeon to control the operating room using natural spoken language. As speech is the modality used by the surgeon to communicate with their staff, using it to control the technical devices does not pose an additional mental burden. Therefore, we claim that the surgical environment presents a potential field of application for Spoken Dialogue Systems. In this work, we present the design and implementation of IDACO as well as the evaluation in an experimental set-up by specialists in the field of minimally invasive surgery. Our expert evaluation yields promising results and allows to conclude that clinical operating rooms are indeed an expedient area of application for Spoken Dialogue Systems.