Bringing Usability to the Front Lines of Medicine

Will Emergency Medical Records (EMRs) make our delivery of medical care more usable?

Whitney, Hunter. Usability Interface (2008). Articles>Usability>Biomedical

How Usability Information Can Improve Clinical Information Systems  

This paper describes a usability engineering program of integrated laboratory and ethnographic studies for collecting user data about a clinical information system. The authors evaluated MIRACLE (Medical Information Retrieval Application for Clinical Enhancement), developed by Philips Medical Systems; physicians and allied health personnel can access MIRACLE from their offices to obtain data about their patients who use hospital services. After an initial heuristic evaluation, we conducted two usability tests and weekly ethnographic interviews with physicians and hospital staff during the software alpha test. Our experience resulted in guidelines for conducting usability programs with medical professionals.

Rosenbaum, Stephanie L., Deborah Hinderer and Phillip Scarborough. Tec-Ed, Inc. (1999). Articles>Usability>Biomedical

Medical Usability: How to Kill Patients Through Bad Design

A field study identified twenty-two ways that automated hospital systems can result in the wrong medication being dispensed to patients. Most of these flaws are classic usability problems that have been understood for decades.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Usability>Biomedical

Usability Testing of Medical Instrument Instruction Manuals  

This panel will discuss usability analysis, user testing, and revision of a medical instruments manual. The study showed that a hidden audience constituted the real users of the manual and that that audience served as an unintended intermediary between the writers of the manual and the users of the instruments. Usability testing showed the merits of a design for the manual that served both the intended and unintended audiences.

Beckmann, Christopher P., Nancy L. Bayer, and Robert Krull. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Biomedical>Usability

Washington DC: Panel Discussion about Usability in Healthcare

The Washington D.C. Usability Special Interest Group teamed up with the local Usability Professionals Association to present a panel discussion about usability in healthcare. Did you know that rising costs, an aging population and pressure to adopt new technologies increasingly strain the healthcare system? At the same time, patients and their families have ever-more access to health information, and many want healthcare to become more patient-centered.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Usability>Biomedical

What You Need to Know to Create High Quality Electronic Documents

Submitting regulatory documents electronically to the FDA is beneficial for sponsors and regulatory reviewers, but the use of electronic submissions brings with it a set of problems associated with how these documents are read by reviewers.

Cuppan, Gregory P. Brainery.net (2009). Articles>Usability>Regulatory Writing>Biomedical