Department of Health Information Technology, Ferdows Faculty of Medical Sciences, Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran.
Health Information Management Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Pezeshk Blvd, 5th of Qotbe Ravandi Blvd - Pardis Daneshgah, Kashan, Isfahan, 8715973449, Iran.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2024 Nov 16;24(1):341. doi: 10.1186/s12911-024-02746-2.
Health information systems play a crucial role in the delivery of efficient and effective healthcare. Poor usability is one of the reasons for their lack of acceptance and low usage by users. The aim of this study was to identify the usability problems of a national comprehensive health information system using the concurrent think-aloud method in the recording of childcare data.
A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in the health centers of Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2020. Ten healthcare providers as system's users were purposively selected to evaluate the system. To identify problems, a concurrent think-aloud evaluation was conducted. Two administrators of the system designed scenarios for ten childcare data recording tasks. By analysing the recorded files, usability problems were identified. The severity of the problems was then determined with the help of the users and problems were assigned to usability attributes based on their impact on the user.
A total of 68 unique problems were identified in the system, of which 47.1% were rated as catastrophic problems. The participants assigned 47 problems (69%) to the user satisfaction attribute and 45 problems (66%) to the efficiency attribute; they also did not assign any problems to the effectiveness attribute.
The problems identified in the national comprehensive health information system using the think-aloud method were rated as major and catastrophic, which indicates poor usability of this system. Therefore, resolving the system problems will help increase user satisfaction and system efficiency, allowing more time to be spent on patient care and parent's education as well as improving overall quality of care.
健康信息系统在提供高效、有效的医疗服务方面发挥着关键作用。其可用性差是用户接受度低、使用率低的原因之一。本研究旨在通过在记录儿童保育数据时使用并发思考 aloud 方法，确定国家综合健康信息系统的可用性问题。
本研究是 2020 年在伊朗卡尚医科大学的卫生中心进行的一项描述性横断面研究。选择了 10 名医疗保健提供者作为系统用户，以评估该系统。为了识别问题，进行了并发思考 aloud 评估。系统的两名管理员为十个儿童保育数据记录任务设计了场景。通过分析记录的文件，确定了可用性问题。然后，在用户的帮助下确定问题的严重程度，并根据对用户的影响将问题分配给可用性属性。
在系统中总共确定了 68 个独特的问题，其中 47.1%被评为灾难性问题。参与者将 47 个问题（69%）分配给用户满意度属性，将 45 个问题（66%）分配给效率属性；他们也没有将任何问题分配给有效性属性。
通过使用思考 aloud 方法在国家综合健康信息系统中识别出的问题被评为主要和灾难性问题，这表明该系统的可用性较差。因此，解决系统问题将有助于提高用户满意度和系统效率，从而为患者护理和家长教育留出更多时间，并提高整体护理质量。
