User-Centered-Design (UCD)

The lack of usability of electronic health records (EHRs) and healthcare IT applications, in general, has been in the news a lot again. This time it is a research report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on March 27. The study analyzed voluntary error reports associated with EHR systems and found that problems with EHR usability may have directly resulted in patient harm. Unfortunately, this situation is all too common in the healthcare industry. Numerous health care systems are designed and created ad hoc, or with a very engineering-centric approach. End users are dissatisfied and often systems or workflows are abandoned and/or dangerous work-a-rounds created. A lot of people are saying Healthcare IT needs a disruption. What HealthIT needs is to begin to learn about and understand the needs, goals, and methods of the actual end-users, like doctors, nurses, medical assistants, etc.