Hybrid usability methods: practical techniques for evaluating health information technology in an operational setting

Abstract

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.