The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently published two guides designed to help vendors of electronic health records make their products easier to use, Health Data Management reports (Goedert, Health Data Management, 12/10).
NIST worked with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on the reports.
NIST Guides
The first NIST report -- titled "NIST Guide to the Processes Approach for Improving the Usability of Electronic Health Records" -- provides guidance on user-centered design principles for EHR applications (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 12/10). The report notes that an EHR with a user-centered design would need to:
- Understand user needs, workflows and work environments;
- Engage users;
- Set user performance objectives;
- Provide a user interface that is based on human behavior principles;
- Conduct usability tests to measure how well the interface meets user needs; and
- Adapt the design over time until performance objectives are fulfilled (Byers, CMIO, 12/9).
The second NIST report -- titled "Customized Common Industry Format Template for Electronic Health Record Usability Testing" -- provides a standard reporting template called the Common User Industry format that can be used to test EHR systems (Healthcare IT News, 12/10).
Related AHRQ Report
In related news, AHRQ recently released a report that identifies shortfalls in the processes that EHR vendors use to ensure usability.
The report -- titled "Electronic Health Record Usability: Vendor Practices and Perspectives" -- noted that the health IT industry lacks standard approaches and formats for testing and reporting EHR usability (CMIO, 12/9).