Abstract
The usability of health information systems has been a continuing issue in health informatics. Numerous health information systems that have been deployed worldwide have been deemed unusable, not fitting clinical workflow, and in some cases end users have rejected poorly designed systems. Along these lines, there is also growing evidence that poorly designed user interfaces may actually lead health professionals to commit medical errors. In this chapter, we describe work in applying user-centered design principles in conjunction with advances in usability engineering to improve the usability of clinical information systems. Several approaches are described from the application of laboratory style usability testing to the use of clinical simulations conducted in-situ in real-world clinical settings. We also discuss how low-cost rapid usability engineering methods can be applied throughout the design and implementation cycle of clinical information systems. In addition to this, emerging approaches to testing systems in clinical settings will be described, along with future directions.
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Additional Readings
Kushniruk, A. (2002). Evaluation in the design of health information systems: Application of approaches emerging from usability engineering. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 32(3), 141–149.
Kushniruk, A. W., & Borycki, E. M. (2006). Low-cost rapid usability engineering: Designing and customizing usable healthcare information systems. Healthcare Quarterly, 9(4), 98–100.
Kushniruk, A. W., & Patel, V. L. (2004). Cognitive and usability engineering approaches to the evaluation of clinical information systems. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 37(1), 56–76.
Kushniruk, A., Nohr, C., Jensen, S., & Borycki, E. M. (2013). From usability testing to clinical simulations: Bringing context into the design and evaluation of usable and safe health information technologies. Yearbook of Medical Informatics, 8(1), 78–85.
Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. (2011). Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.
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Kushniruk, A., Monkman, H., Borycki, E., Kannry, J. (2015). User-Centered Design and Evaluation of Clinical Information Systems: A Usability Engineering Perspective. In: Patel, V.L., Kannampallil, T.G., Kaufman, D.R. (eds) Cognitive Informatics for Biomedicine. Health Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17272-9_7
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