Electronic Health Record systems have the potential to bring huge benefits. Storing and sharing health information electronically can speed up clinical communication, reduce the number of errors and assist doctors in diagnosis and treatment.
To explore the usability of Electronic Health records, User Centric (one of our partners in the UXalliance) recently wrote two white papers. Research was done on two different types of health Record tools:
- Electronic Medical records
- Personal Health records
1) Electronic Medical records
These records are maintained by health care professionals. In recent years, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have been promoted by industry and government as a means of improving patient care and controlling costs.
Although Electronic Health Record systems could improve healthcare, the actual adoption of EHRs has been lower than expected. Recent studies have shown that healthcare professionals have found many EHRs too difficult to use.
To explore why usability remained an issue User Centric inspected dozens of publicly available Requests for Proposal and procurement guidelines for EHRs to learn how usability was address. This inspection revealed that EHR usability was overlooked or only marginally mentioned in nearly all of the documents.
2) Personal Health records
Personal Health records can be used by everyone to collect and keep track of their own health information. A personal health record (PHR) allows users to provide medical care providers with valuable information and insights into their own health story.
An independent comparative usability study compared two existing online personal health record applications, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault. During this study 30 participants completed key tasks using each PHR application and provided qualitative feedback on these tools. Based on this study several recommendations were made to improve PHR interfaces.
More information
More details on these two studies can be found on the website of User Centric. Both white papers can also be downloaded from their website.
- How to Select an Electronic Health Record System that Healthcare Professionals Can Use
http://www.usercentric.com/publications/2009/02/ehr/ - Google Health vs. Microsoft HealthVault: Consumers Compare Online Personal Health Record (PHR) Applications
http://www.usercentric.com/publications/2009/01/phr/