Health information technologies (HIT) including electronic health records (EHRs), bio-medical device interfaces, and a broad array of clinical software applications suffer from usability flaws that impact patient safety, clinician efficiency, and health outcomes . In response, informaticians, systems engineers, and human factors experts have hard fought to raise awareness among stakeholders including clinicians, health administrators, policy makers. The design of health information technology, are often neglected or abbreviated in a misguided effort to reduce production costs, close functionality gaps, or keep pace with software development schedules. The usability specialists (1) assess the UX maturity of their organization; (2) evangelize the importance of evidence-based design; (3) become conversant in a variety of usability techniques and (4) strategically apply hybrid strategies throughout the software design lifecycle. One such problem that affects the industry as it heads toward a paper-less environment is ensuring that decision support tools in the electronic medical record are both safe and effective.

Chapter Contents:

• 2.1 Introduction
• 2.1.1 Problem statement
• 2.1.2 Aims and goals
• 2.1.3 Background and principles
• 2.1.3.1 Approaching usability evaluations
• 2.1.3.2 Cognitive-socio-technical framework
• 2.1.3.3 Evaluation focus and usability dimensions
• 2.2 Commonly used methods
• 2.2.1 Heuristic evaluation
• 2.2.2 Cognitive walkthroughs
• 2.2.3 Goals, operators, methods, and selection (GOMS) rules
• 2.2.4 Hierarchical task analysis
• 2.2.5 Surveys
• 2.2.6 Semi-structured interviews and probes
• 2.2.7 Simulations
• 2.2.8 Severity ratings
• 2.3 Hybrid techniques
• 2.3.1 Simulation combined with heuristic checklist
• 2.3.2 Simulations combined with interviews
• 2.3.3 Simulation combined with surveys
• 2.3.4 Agile task analysis: A combination of simulation and hierarchical task analysis
• 2.3.5 GOMS combined with simulation
• 2.3.6 Heuristic evaluation combined with cognitive walkthrough
• 2.4 Case studies
• 2.4.1 Case study 1
• 2.4.1.1 Background and usability evaluation goals
• 2.4.1.2 Methods and protocol design
• 2.4.1.3 Data analysis
• 2.4.1.4 Results
• 2.4.2 Case study 2
• 2.5 Conclusions
• References

Inspec keywords: software engineering; electronic health records; decision support systems; user interfaces; health care

Other keywords: operational setting; UX maturity; biomedical device interfaces; health information technology; electronic health records; usability techniques; software development; health administrators; HIT; electronic medical record; decision support tools; EHRs; evidence-based design; hybrid usability methods; software design lifecycle; clinical software applications

Subjects: Decision support systems; User interfaces; Medical administration; Software engineering techniques; Biology and medical computing