Are EHRs being used to stifle physicians?
Marla Durben Hirsch, FierceEMR
“Many physicians have been reluctant to embrace electronic health record systems, with concerns about their costs, usability and impact on workflow.
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Usability
Why EMR is a dirty word to many doctors
Adam Sharp, KevinMD
“Don’t get me wrong, EMRs (electronic medical records) are inevitable. Over the long-run they are almost certainly good for physicians, patients and the healthcare industry.
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5 ways to make your EMR more user-friendly
Michelle McNickle, Healthcare IT News
“One of the biggest objections to the adoption of an EMR is its usability (or lack thereof), which is no surprise considering the ease of its predecessor: paper. Thankfully, there are a few ways to make your system not only more bearable, but significantly easier to use.
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Improvements needed in personal health record usability
EndocrineToday.com
“Results of the first usability test of the MyHealtheVet program — the most widely disseminated personal health record system in the United States — indicate a need for improvements in usability.
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Making personal health records more usable
MedicalXpress
“A new study recruited patients into a human-computer interaction laboratory to determine the user experience for several popular functions of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ My HealtheVet, the most widely disseminated personal health record system in the United States.
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Lessons learned from usability testing of the VA’s personal health record
Haggstrom DA et al, J Am Med Inform Assoc, 18 Suppl 1
In order to create user-centered design information to guide the development of personal health records (PHRs), 24 patients participated in usability assessments of VA’s MyHealtheVet program. Observational videos and efficiency measures were collected among users performing four PHR scenarios: registration and log-in, prescription refill, tracking health, and searching for health information. Twenty-five percent of users successfully completed registration. Individuals preferred prescription numbers over names, sometimes due to privacy concerns.
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Still Craving Paper
Kevin Featherly, HITExchange
“Frederick Finelli is medical director of operating rooms at Washington Hospital Center, the biggest hospital in the nation’s capital. He knows his way around an electronic health record, yet trying to navigate the myriad clinical information systems that he must work with can be frustrating.
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Review of health information technology usability study methodologies
Yen P-Y, Bakken S. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2011
Usability factors are a major obstacle to health information technology (IT) adoption. The purpose of this paper is to review and categorize health IT usability study methods and to provide practical guidance on health IT usability evaluation. 2025 references were initially retrieved from the Medline database from 2003 to 2009 that evaluated health IT used by clinicians. Titles and abstracts were first reviewed for inclusion. Full-text articles were then examined to identify final eligibility studies. 629 studies were categorized into the five stages of an integrated usability specification and evaluation framework that was based on a usability model and the system development life cycle (SDLC)-associated stages of evaluation. Theoretical and methodological aspects of 319 studies were extracted in greater detail and studies that focused on system validation (SDLC stage 2) were not assessed further.
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Designing a patient-centered personal health record to promote preventive care
Krist AH et al, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 11(1)
Background
Evidence-based preventive services offer profound health benefits, yet Americans receive only half of indicated care. A variety of government and specialty society policy initiatives are promoting the adoption of information technologies to engage patients in their care, such as personal health records, but current systems may not utilize the technology’s full potential.
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La Historia Clínica en los tiempos de la Sanidad Híbrida
Apiscam
“La historia clínica es una herramienta fundamental para la práctica de la medicina. Sin embargo, pese a los intentos de que este documento evolucione y pase a ser única y electrónica, los modelos con los que se trabaja actualmente no dejan de ser reproducciones de su versión en papel.
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HIMSS Responds to Draft Guidance on Testing EHR Usability
Sabrina Rodak, Becker's Hospital Review
“The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has submitted comments (pdf) on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s draft guidance on “Technical Evaluation, Testing and Validation of the Usability of Electronic Health Records.”
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NIST: Make EHRs More User-Friendly
Nicole Lewis, InformationWeek Healthcare
“The National Institute of Standards (NIST), in conjunction with public and private sector stakeholders, has called on the healthcare community to help evaluate electronic health records (EHRs), examine the human factors that are crucial to their design, and assist with guidance on the development of usability engineering practices.
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The Probable Consequences of EHR Certification are Scary
Daniel Essin, Physicians Practice
“It’s more or less accepted that human behavior is so complex that any attempt to regulate it is bound to have some unintended consequences. By consequence, I mean a negative or undesirable outcome; there is generally little objection to the other kind of consequence, a serendipitous positive result.
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Promoting adoption, usability, and research for personal health records in Canada: The MyChart experience
Curtis J et al, Healthcare Management Forum, 24(3)
Sunnybrook’s MyChart Personal Health Record (PHR) represents a direct extension of the hospital’s electronic health record and an innovative form of healthcare record that promises to change the way patients and providers access and manage the information required to participate in their care.
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A usability evaluation of a SNOMED CT based compositional interface terminology for intensive care
Bakhshi-Raiez F et al, International Journal of Medical Informatics, 2011
Objective
To evaluate the usability of a large compositional interface terminology based on SNOMED CT and the terminology application for registration of the reasons for intensive care admission in a Patient Data Management System.
Design
Observational study with user-based usability evaluations before and 3 months after the system was implemented and routinely used.
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Telehealth Faces Challenges Worldwide
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, InformationWeek Healthcare
“Wireless mobile technologies have great potential to improve global health. But the challenges facing the implementation of mobile health IT worldwide are different than those faced by the efforts to use health IT in the U.S. to transform patient outcomes.
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Is Usability of The #EHR the most important factor hindering adoption
Keith W. Boone, Healthcare Standards
“As I mentioned last Friday, I’m reviewing the NIST draft on the Technical Evaluation, Testing and Validation of the Usability of Electronic Health Records (NISTIR 7804). I just finished my first read of the 108 page document (49 pages of text with about 59 pages of appendices).
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Human-computer interface progress vital to success of EHRs
Ken Terry, FierceHealthIT
“Steve Jobs’ passing last week has triggered myriad reflections on his immense contribution to the modern world. While much emphasis has been placed on Apple’s recent trendsetting products–the iPod, iPhone and iPad–the signal contribution of Apple under the leadership of Jobs and Steve Wozniak was to make the personal computer practical and useful.
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Realizing electronic medical record benefits: an easy-to-do usability study
Harrington L et al, The Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(7-8)
Heuristic evaluation is a type of study that is useful for uncovering usability issues in a human-computer interface such as the electronic medical record (EMR). Findings can be very useful in overcoming usability problems to better realize the benefits of the EMR.
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The EHR is a Platform, not an Application
Keith W. Boone, Healthcare Standards
“One of the challenges many face in their evaluation of Electronic Health Records is the treatment of an EHR as an application that provides all necessary functionality out of the box, rather than a platform that enables it.
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