ed-informatics.org

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 […]

In its most pedantic definition, an ED tracking system is a system for tracking things in the ED. Tracking things that, well, things that we need to keep track of. People. Orders. Labs. Consults. Messages from docs. Many different bits of information that are needed to keep the ED running smoothly. One of the reasons […]

“Unless it produces action, information is overhead.” –Thomas Petzinger First, a caveat: vendors of HISs (hospital information systems) and EDISs (emergency department information systems) insist that a tracking system is just one component of an integrated system. They point out that there are interactions between a tracking system and CPOE (computer-based practitioner order entry) systems, […]

The following historical account is based on personal experience as a child being taken to ERs in the 1950s, as an observer in ERs in the 1960s, an EMT and then street medic training in ERs in the 1970s, and then as an emergency physician since the 1980s. Some names may have been changed or […]

A good principle for medical software is to design for the ED as a worst-case scenario. If it works there, it will work anywhere.No clinicians are as time-pressured as those in a busy Emergency Department. There, distractions – even seemingly minor ones like presenting a complete CBC instead of an abstract – slow the clinician […]