Dougherty Kylie, Tesfaye Yihenew, Biza Heran, Belew Mulusew, Benda Natalie, Gebremariam Gobezayehu Abebe, Cranmer John, Bakken Suzanne
Department of Medical Social Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States.
College of Health Sciences, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.
JMIR Hum Factors. 2025 Apr 3;12:e64131. doi: 10.2196/64131.
Maternal mortality remains a persistent public health concern in sub-Saharan African countries such as Ethiopia. Health information technology solutions are a flexible and low-cost method for improving health outcomes with proven benefits in low- to middle-income countries' health systems.
This study aimed to develop and assess the usability of an electronic dashboard to monitor facility-level readiness to manage basic emergency obstetric care (BEmOC) in Amhara, Ethiopia.
The study used three methods to iteratively refine the dashboard: (1) user-centered design sessions with individuals who interact with the BEmOC supply chain, (2) review and feedback from domain and information visualization subject matter experts (SMEs) to refine the dashboard, and (3) usability heuristic evaluation with human-computer interaction (HCI) SMEs.
User-centered design sessions resulted in a preliminary version of the dashboard informed by end-user preferences and perceptions, with recommendations focusing on aesthetic design, filtering and sorting, and matching with the real world. An example of an end-user recommendation included increasing font sizes on the dashboard and using a red, yellow, and green color-coding scheme. Next, domain and visualization SMEs continued the dashboard's iterative refinement, focusing on aesthetic design and navigation, by confirming design choices incorporated from the user-centered design sessions and recommending changes to enhance user experience moving through the dashboard, such as adding more filtering options. HCI SMEs rated the dashboard as highly usable (0.82 on a scale of 0-4, with 0 being no usability concern and 4 being a catastrophic usability concern). The principle with the highest usability severity scores was a match between the system and the real world with a score of 1.4. The HCI SMEs also rated the information visualization aspects of the dashboard favorably with 2 usability principles, spatial organization and information coding, scoring 0.
Dashboards are a novel method for promoting and tracking facility capacity to manage BEmOC. By including targeted end users and SMEs in the design process, the team was able to tailor the dashboard to meet user needs, fit it into the existing government health systems, and ensure that the dashboard follows design best practices. Collectively, the novel, customized BEmOC dashboard can be used to track and improve facility-level readiness in Amhara, Ethiopia, and similar global BEmOC facilities.
在埃塞俄比亚等撒哈拉以南非洲国家，孕产妇死亡率仍然是一个长期存在的公共卫生问题。卫生信息技术解决方案是一种灵活且低成本的方法，可改善健康结果，在低收入和中等收入国家的卫生系统中已证明具有益处。
本研究旨在开发并评估一个电子仪表盘的可用性，以监测埃塞俄比亚阿姆哈拉地区医疗机构对基本急诊产科护理（BEmOC）的准备情况。
该研究使用三种方法对仪表盘进行迭代优化：（1）与参与BEmOC供应链的人员进行以用户为中心的设计会议；（2）领域和信息可视化主题专家（SMEs）进行审查并提供反馈以完善仪表盘；（3）与人机交互（HCI）SMEs进行可用性启发式评估。
以用户为中心的设计会议产生了一个仪表盘的初步版本，该版本依据最终用户的偏好和认知形成，建议主要集中在美学设计、筛选和排序以及与现实世界的匹配方面。一个最终用户建议的例子包括增大仪表盘上的字体大小并使用红、黄、绿三色编码方案。接下来，领域和可视化SMEs继续对仪表盘进行迭代优化，重点关注美学设计和导航，通过确认从以用户为中心的设计会议中纳入的设计选择，并建议进行更改以增强用户浏览仪表盘时的体验，例如添加更多筛选选项。HCI SMEs将该仪表盘评为高度可用（在0至4的量表上得分为0.82，0表示无可用性问题，4表示存在灾难性可用性问题）。可用性严重程度得分最高的原则是系统与现实世界的匹配，得分为1.4。HCI SMEs对仪表盘的信息可视化方面也给予了好评，有2条可用性原则，即空间组织和信息编码，得分为0。
仪表盘是一种促进和跟踪医疗机构管理BEmOC能力的新颖方法。通过在设计过程中纳入目标最终用户和SMEs，团队能够定制仪表盘以满足用户需求，使其适应现有的政府卫生系统，并确保仪表盘遵循设计最佳实践。总体而言，这个新颖的、定制的BEmOC仪表盘可用于跟踪和改善埃塞俄比亚阿姆哈拉地区以及类似的全球BEmOC医疗机构的机构层面准备情况。
