Computers, Medicine, Usability, viewed from the ED
If you're new here, you might like to look through this introduction to the site first.
Are you interested in how computers can reduce medical error?
Did you know that many early medical computer systems increased medical error? (Some current ones, too.)
From your own experience with your own computer at home, do you think that some computers and programs crash on a regular basis? Do you think that most software is hard to use, rude, and frustrating to work with? Based on experience, what you’ve heard, or simple extrapolation, do you suspect that medical computer systems are even worse?
Did you know that the best place to test medical computer systems is the ED, because people working in the ED don’t have the time to deal with bad computer systems, and are intolerant of BS? (If it works in the ED, you can make it work anywhere else in the hospital.)
Do you want to learn more about how to make medical computer systems usable, so as to prevent medical error?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then read through the Medical Computing series. Although looked at from my viewpoint in the ED, it all applies to medical computer systems wherever they are used, in a hospital, in a clinic or in an office.
If you need a backgrounder on Healthcare IT concepts and terminology, see Healthcare IT in a Nutshell.
There’s also a series of “word” essays that focus on particular and generally more advanced medical computer issues.
To keep up with new postings, you might want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
One final note: Once explained, most of the suggestions on this site seem simple and obvious. But as one is creating a program, or even as one is using a program with a high level of frustration, they are still not obvious until pointed out.
I hope you find the site informative and, perhaps, a bit mind-expandingly entertaining.
Keith Conover, M.D., FACEP
No, I’m not talking about a system error message like Windows’ infamous “Abort, Retry, Fail?”
I’m talking about active cognitive ignoring.
This occurred to me as I’ve been using an electronic medical record system called DocuTAP. It has many very, very busy screens, each with a hundred or so items from which to choose.
But I and other have learned to use it relatively quickly and efficiently. It’s hard, and it takes a lot of concentration and time, but we’ve done it.
Quoting from the website: “The DocuTAP system is extremely user-friendly and easy to learn. We can typically teach a new staff member how to use the system in less than two hours.” –Greg Troyer Owner. Yes, but how long does it take to learn to use it efficiently and effectively? I probably shouldn’t be picking on DocuTAP, as it’s no worse than many other point-and-click charting solutions, and at least you can learn to use it fairly efficiently, which is not true of a fair number of its competitors, so I’d rate it better-than-average. Read the rest of this entry »
