Usability Health Check for Electronic Health Records

In response to the growing need for understanding the usability of electronic healthcare records (EHRs), US company User Centric has launched the first syndicated user performance research designed to provide end-users with real data on the usability of EHR applications.

One of the key limiting factors to adoption now is usability. Up to now the focus for comparing EHRs has been on functionality, and CCHIT's expansive list of nearly 500 functions. Many of these functions do not apply to many practices or specialties. CCHIT evaluations make no comment on how "usable" these functions are across vendors. Neither CCHIT nor the governmental bodies has taken the lead on ensuring that the applications are usable by providers in the busy practice of medicine.

"This is the opportunity for those vendors who claim to be 'user friendly' or 'easy to use' to independently verify that claim against other vendors," says Gavin Lew, Founder and Managing Director. "User Centric's long history of expertise in user research and user interface analysis and design, position us strongly to measure and improve the customer experience with EHRs and EMRs."

There are many examples from industries outside of healthcare where functionally equivalent, mission-critical applications are reliably measured and compared.

"User Centric is uniquely positioned to provide this service as we are experts in human performance, and experts in user interface design," says Dr. Robert Schumacher, Managing Director. "For the first time health care purchasers will get to the heart of 'meaningful use' — objective, independent data based on actual use. Our research will not be based on a surveys or checklists. It is real performance measurement gathered from practicing clinicians using realistic data. Combined with CCHIT and KLAS data, healthcare purchasers can have a complete picture of function, opinion, and now usability of applications."

User Centric's syndicated research offering consists of employing state-of-the-art user research methods to measure efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Clinical users, representative of the market, will perform tasks based on use cases drawn from ONCHIT. Criterion-based measures of learnability and usability will be collected.

Usability is highly correlated with adoption. Applications that are more usable stand a higher chance of success in the marketplace.

Associated Link: More: Service to assess usability of EHR systems

Passwords that are Simple - and Safe
Source: MIT Technology Review, 29 July 2010
 
Researchers at Microsoft have come up with a way to create easy-to-remember passwords without making a system more vulnerable to hackers.

Coercing people into a Brave New digital World
Source: Spiked, 27 July 2010
 
Does a government-backed campaign to get the entire UK adult population online threaten to make cyber slaves of us all?

iPhone 4 one month on – A user experience and functionality success, despite antenna issues
Source: Webcredible, 26 July 2010
 
Webcredible Senior Consultant, Abid Warsi suggests that the impressive functionality and user experience of the iPhone 4 is enough to overcome the widely reported technical issues, thus proclaiming the device a big success.

Darwin City Council Website - Australia’s Most Usable!
Source: Loop11, 24 July 2010
 
Darwin City Council came out on top in a recent website usability study of Australia's capital city councils. The aim was to discover which of the six council websites was the most user friendly and usable.

Digital Design Jobs first to experience Growth
Source: UN, 23 July 2010
 
The marketing and design industry in the UK is seeing strong signs of renewed confidence, according to the new European Market Eye report from the industry’s specialist recruitment consultancy, Aquent.

Usability at a Glance
Source: usability-ed, 22 July 2010
 
Something interesting and useful to print out and stick on your wall.

Google may know your Desires before You do
Source: New Scientist, 21 July 2010
 
In future, your Google account may know your birthday and anniversaries, consumer gadget preferences, preferred hobbies and pastimes, even favourite foods. It will also know where you are.

Closing the Usability Gap between Enterprise Applications and Consumer Web Applications
Source: Integrated Solutions for Retailers, 20 July 2010
 
New White Paper on Workforce Management and the increasingly ancient software which controls it.

Collect Words, not just Numbers with Feedback Analytics
Source: CMS Wire, 19 July 2010
 
Tracking visitors’ behaviors online can help us understand how customers use a site - but what if you could actually ask each individual a question? That’s what Kampyle aims to do with its feedback analytics tools.

Back to the Future...
Source: ZDNet, 17 July 2010
 
Always a popular sport, comparing the PC with the motor industry is as relevant as ever.