Approaches to Demonstrating the Effectiveness and Impact of Usability Testing of Healthcare Information Technology.

In recent years the usability of health information systems has come to the fore as a major issue, with many reported examples of problems with the usability of systems such as electronic health records and other health information technologies (HIT). In response a range of usability engineering methods have emerged to help in the design and evaluation of HIT. Many studies have shown the importance of usability testing methods that include full video recording of user interactions, such as the method known as low-cost rapid usability testing. However, such approaches have been considered by many as being too costly to carry out and some have argued that they may take too long to be used for practical input into improving applications and systems. In this paper we demonstrate several approaches we have taken for proving the cost-effectiveness and benefit of conducting principled usability testing. It is argued that such studies are needed to inform system design and evaluation and for proving to healthcare management the need for properly conducting such studies before releasing HIT.