“Wrong Patient”

Updates, December 2014, October 2016: short addenda at end. Speaking of “Bad Design Killing” a big part of the discussion at the ACEP Informatics Section meeting in San Francisco this month was about one particular usability problem with CPOE: entering orders on the wrong patient. I’ve done this myself – as far as I know […]

Color

  When designing a computer screen, we have to keep in mind one of the defining elements of the computer monitor: its ability to display many colors. Having desktop publishing software does not mean we know how to design a magazine, and just because we have color monitors does not automatically mean that we know […]

Efficiency

It is said, usually by vendors, that installing an EDIS (Emergency Department Information System) will negatively impact ED efficiency for a short time, and then efficiency will increase to levels higher than before, thus: But ED Information Technology pundit Dr. Todd Taylor (emergency physician, past Speaker of the national Council of the American College of […]

Meaningful Use

  Meaningful Use has become a less-meaningful phrase in the USA over the past year or so, at least to those of us who work in the ED. Intentionally or no, politicians twist and deform the English language like no others. Their latest target, at least as far as Emergency Department computer systems are concerned, […]

Natural Mapping, Search and Affordance

Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of execution and evaluation. Use technology to make visible what would otherwise be invisible, thus improving feedback and the ability to keep control. –Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things Norman states: Mapping is a technical term meaning the relationship between two things, in this case between the […]