EMR Usability, Leapfrog or IBM OS/2

I stumbled across an interesting article this afternoon on FierceHealthIT by Anne Zieger, “HIMSS says poor usability cuts EMR adoption.” In her article she basically reports that HIMSS published a paper outlining usability as one of the key reasons that will prevent EMR adoption. In their paper, HIMSS proposed that usability should become a part of the EMR certification process. HIMSS EHR Usability Task Force chair Jeffery Belden, MD stated that if certified EMRs were guaranteed to be user-friendly, decision-makers would feel more confident in selecting such systems.

What concern me are the diverse computer skills among the provider community. Some providers take to technology like a fish to water, and there are others where it’s more like forcing a kid to eat spinach. Usability testing in its purest form is generally done using black-box testing techniques, whereas the aim is to observe a random set of people using the product to discover errors and areas of improvement. If the usability test group is skewed towards the technology adverse providers, the resulting interface could end up resembling a Leapfrog educational gadget. Or if it’s skewed towards the technology favorable providers the interface could end up resembling IBM’s ill-fated OS/2 operating system, a PC operating system that was only appreciated by the most technical savvy of technologists.

Yes, I have over simplified the issue of usability certification. Surely the random collection of usability testers (providers) would be a fair representation of the skill set in the provider community. However, the criticality of assembling a “fair representation” of the provider community does give me reason to pause on the idea of usability certification for EMR applications to "guarantee" user-friendliness.

Read the complete HIMSS paper here.


Read FierceHealth IT article here.