The Need for the Usability Designer

Usability concerns in healthcare technology are top of mind for those who are creating the software (and in some cases medical devices) that form the chain of healthcare, ranging from EHR software, tablets, e-prescribing devices, insurance software and more. Because of usability requirements for meaningful use, the electronic health record (EHR) is of particular importance right now. The EHR needs to be easy to use for patients, clinicians and other entities.  Bloggers like Matthew Holt have questioned whether federal regulation of usability is necessary, and instead have called for market forces to dictate the best products. I want to call to your attention the need for usability experts, whose role is to act as mediators between developers, internal teams, stakeholders, and yes, the user. The usability designer can help identify not just who the ideal user of a product or interface is, but how to develop an overall experience that facilitates their tasks.

The role of the usability engineer or designer is one that is still new to most organizations. Software development teams now regularly use usability testing and iterative methods to service the user, but buy-in for these methods can still remain elusive, since usability design needs to be implemented in all stages of development. You don’t need to be a developer to know that the various stages of a piece of EMR software, a patient portal, even a medical iPhone or iPad app, need to be designed for the user.  The usability designer in an organization can be involved from early product development, all the way through rollout to make sure the product serves the needs of its user.

When we speak of user-centered designs in a healthcare context, we are in many cases talking about the patient, but we also cannot forget the nurses, physicians, payors and providers who also need to use healthcare software and hardware. HIMSS mission is to improve patient care through technology, so what better place to hold a discussion about usability than in this post. I would like to offer my own definition of healthcare usability as “technologies, designs and experiences that improve patient care through intuitive actions and ease of use.”  The stakes are high in healthcare. Not only can a usable healthcare interface save a company or provider millions of dollars, it can also save lives and improve outcomes.

To get you started in the realm of usability, I’d like to point you to a few useful links to papers and leaders in the field:

• A Brief History of the Usability Profession
• EHR Usability tools and papers on himss.org
• Jeffrey Belden. @JeffBelden (former speaker at HIMSS Virtual Conference). Check out his latest slide set “EHR Usability: An Illustrated Guide”
• A very useful EHR Usability issue of the Clinical Informatics Insights newsletter
• Jakob Nielsen, one of the longtime leaders in the field of usability
• The Information Architecture Institute, and its Journal of Information Architecture
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality U.S. Department of Health’s report  “Electronic Health Record Usability. Vendor Practices and Perspectives,” which got quite a bit of attention in the blogosphere earlier this year.

I believe all parts of software systems, websites and other interfaces should make life easier for its users. I am excited to blog about usability for the HIMSS Blog, and in order to fine tune the usability of this communication medium, I’d love to know your thoughts. I encourage you to post your comments below and let us know what your own user-experience concerns are as they pertain to your part of the industry. If you’re a UX designer or information architect, tell us more about yourself and what your role is in health IT. Let’s get a conversation going.