Usability

The TIGER Initiative

Technology Informatics Guiding Educational Reform

Usability and Clinical Application Design Collaborative Team

Usability Goals

Core usability principles include:

· An early and consistent focus on users of the product

· Iterative design processes (multiple versions matched to users, tasks and environments)

· Systematic product evaluations (with product users and metrics)

TIGER Usability and Clinical Application Development Collaborative Report available for download. Click the image on the left to download this report.

Current information systems and technology in practice today do not always meet the workflow and information flow requirements of nurses. In fact, they can hamper widespread adoption of electronic health records. For one thing, much of this technology was not designed to support nursing work or thought processes. Products with good clinical design would support nurses every day in their practices.

The TIGER Usability and Clinical Application Design Collaborative Team analyzed how to further define key concepts, patterns and trends and recommendations to health information technology (HIT) vendors and practitioners to assure useable clinical systems at the point of care. This report describes the background, methodology, findings, and recommendations for future work in this area.

The focus on usability can lead to improvement of clinical IT products in three key areas: efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. This means that appropriate design of IT can lead to more productivity, reduce errors, fit within workflow, improve accuracy, be easy to learn, and lead to more satisfied healthcare providers. TIGER recommends that nurses use the techniques described within this report in both purchasing decisions and to actively participate in IT product development efforts.