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Interface Productivity Evaluation™ for Health Care Organizations

Related Pages: EHR User Experience Consulting, Usability Evaluations, User Research

  • Are your clinical staff complaining that your Health IT (HIT) applications are too hard to use?

  • How well do your HIT applications support your clinical staff's activities?

  • Are you achieving a high level of user adoption and getting the expected ROI?

Usability is crucial for the successful adoption of HIT systems

Healthcare professionals often complain that HITs slow them down and are too difficult to use.

Basic usability and productivity issues can significantly hamper adoption - even more than other barriers such as costs and installation effort.

As one the largest user experience research firms in the US, User Centric is pleased to announce a specific service offering for improving the usability of Health IT applications called Interface Productivity Evaluation.

What is an Interface Productivity Evaluation?

Interface Productivity Evaluation was developed to identify HIT productivity issues brought about by poor user interface design and identify ways to improve productivity and satisfaction. We do this by:

  • Gathering detailed insight from on-site observations of clinical staff using the applications
  • Collecting user performance metrics on the HIT user interfaces
  • Identifying how well the applications support clinical activities and clinical productivity
  • Evaluating the user interface on best practices in interface design

The end result: Specific recommendations for optimizing the HIT user interface so that your clinical team is more efficient.

How does an Interface Productivity Evaluation work?

We get to the bottom of efficiency of usage, effectiveness of operation, and satisfaction of users. To do this, we conduct on-site observations of how your clinical staff uses the HIT application. We apply proven user research methods for in situ observation, measurement, and analysis. We evaluate the interfaces using our expertise in user interface design, and provide concrete information on improving the design. We can also conduct surveys to get a broader sample of satisfaction. Our analysis and interpretation is unbiased and meant to get at facts, not opinion.

What does the Interface Productivity Evaluation provide?

As part of a detailed analysis, User Centric's human factors and behavioral experts will provide specific and prioritized insights for improving the interface of your current HIT applications so that your clinical staff is more efficient. We focus on the following:

  • Match between the current HIT interface and actual clinical workflow: Feedback on the relevance of the HIT interface to clinical activities and workflow specific to the specialties and roles of the clinical team members.
  • Performance of the User Interface: Identification of major and minor usability issues faced by clinical team members during everyday activities. We will identify the current ease-of-use level, stumbling blocks in navigation and task completion, critical controls and fields for time-intensive activities, and relative efficiency levels based on average times for task completion.
  • Key Trouble Spots and Major Interface Issues: Analysis of specific areas within the user interface that generate high levels of user frustration, based on clinicians' feedback and observed interactions with the HIT user interface.
  • Interface Improvements: Specific interface recommendations for improving general usability -specific user interface issues which take into account typical workflow and use cases affecting your clinical staff.

How can I start?

Call us at +1.630.320.3900 or email info@usercentric.com.  Our senior management team has extensive experience in usability consulting. We love to talk with potential clients. Starting the dialog and building the level of trust is especially important to us. We'll explain in detail how we can work together and how your team can benefit.

HIT Usability Webinars

User Centric presented a Health IT Usability Webinar Series in September 2009. This series discussed the essentials of usability in the context of Health IT, the fundamentals of measuring user experience, and how to incorporate usability into Health IT development.  All three Webinars can be viewed on demand by visiting http://www.usercentric.com/hit-usability/video.  For more information on these webinars or if you'd like to have a live presentation for your club or organization on these topics, please contact Pamela Stoffregen-Gay (pstoffregen@usercentric.com).