View an amazing collection of new military healthcare devices in the battlefield!

“With the growing swiftness and capability of today’s technology, medical tools are increasing in their specificity to meet military healthcare needs. The combat environment calls for particular solutions; on the battlefield, where time is of essence, military healthcare providers need the right implement, at the right time. With extensive research and the integration of the latest civilian technology, innovators are finally poised to meet these needs.”

Now, with the onset of a multitude of EMR software programs coming to market now and in the next few years, software vendors are now marketing usability as a key feature of their products.

The real question is, are their products really more usable than their competitor’s? I’ve designed a number of EMR’s and electronic field data collection systems, and I know that most of the EMR’s I’ve seen have been far less than usable!

Here’s what vendors are supposedly focusing on to improve their product’s usability:

1. Reducing click counts and the time it takes to accomplish tasks
2. Improving screen-design elements
3. Creating consistencies in screen designs
4. Reducing information overload
5. Reducing alert fatigue
6. Matching system flow to workflow
7. Building forgiveness into data entry

However, following a usability checklist does not guarantee a product’s usability. Product design involves many iterative stages and activities, including user research, prototyping and design, and user testing.

A recent review of EMR usability is worth a read at amednews.com – Check it out!

Here’s an article titled “AMA report: Standardizing EMRs would ‘stifle innovation‘” that addresses these issues.

The topics of usability of electronic medical records (EMRs)–and their ability to “effectively integrate” with clinical decision-making and work flow–will be on the agenda when the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates meets next month in Chicago. The focus, contained in a trustees report, will be on how these issues have not been adequately addressed so far.

The trustees report addresses a 2009 resolution that called for the AMA to promote the development and universal adoption of a “standardized user interface” for all EMR systems, and to advocate for a federal mandate for interoperability of EMRs as part of its healthcare reform agenda.

For more information, view these links:

• AMA Board of Trustees report (.pdf)
• NextGov Article

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and  Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) are working to provide guidelines for healthcare software usability.

Healthcare providers may soon have guides that describe the usability of electronic health records – designed to make the steps to adopt and use health IT clear and transparent and, in the process, improve patient safety.

Among the efforts, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing a set of procedures that are objective and repeatable for evaluating, testing and validating the usability of electronic health records and other health IT systems, said Lana Lowry, NIST health IT usability project lead.

Usability guidelines and evaluation techniques in healthcare are sorely needed. Keep up to date on these efforts here:

• Government Health IT 
• Certification/Adoption Workgroup
• ONC awards $60M for health IT “breakthroughs’

Here’s a summary of the conference on Mad*Pow, the organizer of the event:

Mad*Pow and Claricode are partnering to host the first-of-its-kind Healthcare Experience Design Conference. The one-day conference will be held on April 11, 2011 at the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston, and is designed to inspire and empower thought leaders, students, and working professionals in the fields of healthcare design, usability, and technology development.

Conference details, including featured speakers and registration information can be found at Healthcare Experience Design -Improving Health Through Design and Technology

As a long-time user experience practitioner, I was taken aback by these attack from many sides. However, as my partner at Success PragmatiQ, Larry Marine, and I have come to realize, there is some truth to these concerns. Larry and I have addressed these issues in a number of articles and blog posts. Read on…

First, there has been a historic battle in Agile development camps as to the importance and place in the agile process. Many agile developers don’t see a need for up-front user research and product design. Unfortunately, agile is a development process and not a design process. Larry Marine and I addressed this problem in a recent article, “The Grand Design in Improving Agile Success,” on the new Software Quality Connection website. Our approach is that up-front, user-centered research can define users’ problems and create a design that solves these problems. User experience design can then be integrated into the agile process with parallel sprints that preceed development work. Read our article and let us know what you think!

Secondly, other articles have stated that user-centric design approaches don’t produce breakthrough designs. Read “User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea” at Fast Company’s Co.Design. Their premise is that listening to users and user-led design produces incremental improvements to design and sameness rather than innovative products. Our response to this is presented in Larry’s blog, “Mediocrity in Design.” Our response will definitely stir the pot! Again, please let us know what you think.

Finally, Larry was interviewed in Boulder by Allison Tatterson, where he spoke about user experience and what product managers should know about it. View the interview text and video. Here’s a snippet of what Larry had to say:

Every interaction someone has with a product, service, or company, creates an “experience,” including the branding, messaging, product positioning, sales channels, ordering/purchasing process, as well as the actual use of the product. Every touch-point combines to create a general perception by the users, and, as the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. That experience sets the tone of how that user will perceive the company and all aspects of it, including other products and services. User-experience design is the process of managing those experience touch points to achieve a specific desired effect. Good experience design is all about setting and managing specific expectations and experiences.

Along these lines, I wrote a brief article, ”Effective Website Design – It’s all about managing expectations!” – in RMDMA Magazine (Page 4). Same topic – managing expectations about website design.

We hope this will generate comments and discussion about the drawbacks and improvements to be made in user experience and user-centered design. There’s nothing like a frontal attack to rally the troups!!

Here’s what it’s all about:

Health 2.0’s original tag line of ‘user-generated healthcare’ contains the germ of a compelling idea—patients are using new tools to guide their own care. And now those tools are starting to integrate with the health care system. Doctors, patients, and health care organizations are all starting to use a new generation of online and mobile technologies which are fundamentally changing the way health care works.

The Health 2.0 Conference is the leading showcase of cutting-edge technologies in health care, including Online Communities, Search and lightweight Tools for consumers to manage their health and connect to providers online.

Check out the Health 2.0 2010 Developer Challenge Website!

P.S. I’ve just joined the Challenge as an expert. View my Member Page.

I work on the usability of healthcare software systems. I’m glad to see that usability professionals are also working on medical devices and other areas of people’s life impacted by their health. Here’s a summary of the study:

Experimental electronic pill bottle caps prompted up to 99 percent of the participants of a study to stay on their medication schedules, says the Center for Connected Health. The pill bottle covers send wireless signals that activate a glowing light, a tune, automated calls, text messages or e-mails to notify patients that it’s time to take their medication.

Here’s the eWeek.com article

“Last week, during the fever pitch surrounding the announcement of Apple’s iPad tablet, Software Advice surveyed 178 physicians, nurses, medical students and healthcare IT professionals about what the healthcare industry’s ideal tablet would look like. This isn’t our first time talking tablets and healthcare. In April of last year, we wondered if the Apple tablet would become the ideal device to run electronic health record (EMR) software.

Our goal with this survey: Find out what healthcare professionals want in a tablet and how well Apple’s iPad fulfills those wants. Unfortunately for the iPad, as we found out last Wednesday when Steve Jobs unveiled the tablet’s features, it only has a few of the top “must-have” features for healthcare use.“

This chart shows how likely respondents are to purchase a tablet for healthcare use in the next year. 

<< View Survey >>

After breaking her leg, Bridget Duffy got a close look at the patient experience – by being a patient herself. At the first Gel Health conference, Bridget discusses what she learned – and what has inspired her, throughout her career, to advocate for improved patient experience.

This is a video everyone in healthcare should watch!!

<< View the Video >>