Inspired EHRs: Designing for Clinicians now available FREE!

Inspired EHRs: Designing for Clinicians (formerly EHR Usability Style Guide) is a generously illustrated, interactive e-book for health IT developers, whether EHR / PHR / healthcare app software vendors, EHR client organization implementation teams, EHR consultants, or usability professionals. We made this book to be clinically relevant, inspirational, and illustrative, but not prescriptive. Freely available on the web at inspiredEHRs.org, it's available as a PDF version as well.

Written in an accessible, science journalist style, the book was developed in a series of workshops with the support and encouragement of our colleagues of the Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) Clinician Experience Workgroup. This book was made possible thanks to the generous support of the SHARPC Project of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT and the California HealthCare Foundation. The team, based at the University of Missouri-Columbia in partnership with Involution Studios Boston included colleagues from the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab and The University of Texas Health Sciences Center-Houston.

The content of this book and the code of its prototypes is made available under the Apache 2.0 open source license. This license agreement allows anyone to freely use the code and ideas presented in this book, subject to the conditions listed at http://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0.

To provide feedback on the book, email us at feedback@inspiredEHRs.org.

To discuss future books, email me at beldenj@health.missouri.edu.

Newly released, Free trial of TURF - EHR Usability Evaluation Software

SHARPC is pleased to announce the release of a new version of Turf^TM, a software tool designed to evaluate, document, and improve EHR usability

Turf supports user testing and heuristic evaluation - all in one integrated software system.

Key Features of Turf version 2.0:

• ·         Seamlessly collect audio, screen play, participant video, and keystroke events. 
• ·         Create a reusable protocol through Autoflow for streamlining moderation of user testing.
• ·         Generate usability reports in a format required for Safety Enhanced Design.
• ·         Conduct descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. 

For more information or to download a free 3 month trial of Turf^TM please visit http://bit.ly/Turfsoftware

AMIA 10x10 Healthcare Interface Design -- Distance Learning Course Starts Soon!

Virtual  AMIA 10x10 with University of Texas

July 23, 2012 - September 28, 2012

 

Click here to Register 

Online Course

$2,195

AMIA 10x10 Partner  

 

Healthcare Interface Design Distance Learning Course

This is the second 10x10 offering from The Univeristy of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics

The School of Biomedical Informatics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston will be offering its Healthcare Interface Design Distance Learning Course as part of the AMIA 10x10 program.

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s contribution to the AMIA 10x10 is an online course that focuses on EMR, human-computer interaction, human factors and Health IT usability.

This on-line interactive course will allow the student to master the fundamental principles and methods in health interface design, learn how to evaluate the usability of existing systems, and also learn how to design new systems with built-in good usability by applying related theories, principles, methodologies and techniques.

The AMIA-UTH 10x10 course is intended for Health IT professionals, CIO’s, CMIO’s, system developers and programmers, researchers and informaticians, physicians, nurses, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other healthcare professionals. The registrant should have an educational background in health sciences, computer science, informatics, or other related areas.

CME's currently are not available for this online course.

Click here for more detailed course logistic information.

Director

Jiajie Zhang is the Dr. Doris L. Ross Professor and the Interim Dean at the School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He is the Principal Investigator of the ONC funded SHARP project on Patient-Centered Cognitive Support and the Director of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare. He is also the Director of Usability at the Texas Gulf Coast Regional Extension Center for Health IT. Dr. Zhang is an elected Fellow of American College of Medical Informatics. He will serve as the Director of the AMIA-UTH 10x10 program.

Dr. Zhang has spent the past two decades doing research in biomedical informatics, human-centered design, decision making, and information visualization. He has authored more than 150 publications. He has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on dozens of grants from ONC, NASA, Office of Naval Research, Army, NIH, James S. McDonnell Foundation, State of Texas, and other funding agencies.

This 10x10 course is based on the Healthcare Interface Design course Dr. Zhang has taught at the University of Texas at Houston for more than 14 years. Dr. Zhang has been teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels for 20 years, having taught courses in human-computer interaction, information visualization, and technology-mediated social dynamics, cognitive science, and computer modeling. Dr. Zhang has supervised or co-supervised nearly twenty PhD students and over sixty master’s students. Dr. Zhang was a recipient of John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher Award.

Introducing MATH by SHARPC -- Seeking Pilot Partners

MATH is a suite of software tools to make clinical workflow and the flow of clinical information work together to measurably improve the efficiency of care.

MATH was invented because mismatches between workflow and information flow can make HIT’s impact on clinical care unpredictable. The way computers organize and present information is intended to support user workflow and decision‐making, but at the same time they also constrain them. The content, organization, and representation of information impose powerful constraints on the way users perform their tasks. The software of an information system actually embodies a model of workflow, whether or not it was understood, planned, or validated by the provider.

Synchrony between information flow and workflow is a key principle of for successful, efficient task performance and teamwork. If the information constraints of an HIT system do not match the appropriate workflow of care, then its users are faced with a dilemma: either perform additional overhead tasks to compensate, or follow a sub‐optimal workflow. Overhead tasks may be imposed on users when the organization or sequence of information does not match workflow, when the presentation format does not match a task, when information from diverse resources must be integrated manually, or if controlling functionality requires excessive attention. Overhead tasks in HIT are more than just extra work for healthcare professionals; they can disrupt users’ cognition, obscure their perception of tasks, and inhibit the orchestration of care. In the worst cases, poor usability can place ease‐of‐use in opposition to safety.

In order to create evidence-based HIT systems for clinical care we have developed MATH, a method that is supported by an integrated suite of software tools. Our vision for MATH is that HIT will serve as a reliable, understandable means for health care leaders and software vendors to work together to plan and direct strategic, cost‐effective improvements to clinical care. The technical objective is to make predictable, measurable, workflow improvements integral to the way HIT software is created. MATH analyzes, designs and validates HIT systems with credible, objective evidence that they will make routine performance of safe, efficient workflow the easiest course of action.

For a brief  explanatory demo of MATH, please go to the SHARPCblog channel on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/SHARPCblog?feature=watch) and select “MATH for Evidence-based HIT”. We are looking for potential partners for pilot projects with MATH. If you currently do workflow modeling of clinical care, and would like to have an initial conversation, please contact SHARPC@uth.tmc.edu.

All ONC Strategic Health ITAdvanced Research Projects (SHARP) will be on the exhibit floor at HIMSS12

Stop by the SHARP booth at HIMSS12. We will be located in Booth 14323 in Exhibit Hall G at the Venetian Sands Exhibition Center for #HIMSS12. Representatives from each of the SHARP Programs will be available to talk about the exciting work they are doing to develop innovative reserach to accelerate progress toward the meaningful use of health IT and a high-performing, adaptive, nationwide health care system.

If you would like to schedule an appointment with a specific researcher or Program preresentative during show hours, please email sharpc@uth.tmc.edu so that we can get you in touch with the correct contact.

EHR Usability Symposium: Present and Future TODAY in Washington DC

We are having a lively conversation today!

SHARPC has now posted the presentations from today's AMIA Pre-Symposium at the following link:
http://www.uthouston.edu/nccd/events/pre-amia-symposium/presentations.htm

Draft NIST Protocol for EHR Usability Evaluation Available for Public Comment

The electronic healthcare record (EHR) has great promise as a tool to mitigate the high risks of healthcare. In the past, the usability of the EHR has not been paid sufficient attention.

NIST has assembled a group working diligently on objective usability methods  for the electronic healthcare record.  A diverse group of usability experts that have contributed to this protocol. Each one is committed to safer healthcare supported by the science of usability. After a careful deliberation the protocol has been published and is now available for public comments.

Please find time to read the protocol and comment thoughtfully on this draft. While it may not satisfy each of our ultimate desires – we hope we have established a reasonable baseline that will inform a safer future. Please support this effort and add to the progress of this important step for healthcare.

The announcement, the full report, and links to public  comments are available at:

http://www.nist.gov/healthcare/usability/index.cfm