Washington DC World Usability Day: Panel Discussion - Usability in Health Care

Health care affects all of us and our quality of life. The health care system is increasingly under strain due to rising costs, an aging population, and pressure to adopt new technologies. At the same time, patients and their families have more access to health information than ever before, and there is a push for health care to become more patient-centered.

While new technologies offer much promise in health care, they must be designed to work effectively for the medical professionals and patients who use them.

Usability is the degree to which something is easy to use, and a “good fit” for the people and the environments in which it is used. Although usability has become more well-known in the world of web and software design, it applies to any product or system designed for use by people.

Usable products require less training, help people work more efficiently, and reduce the risk of error. Consider the following facts:

• Errors in health care can have serious consequences. According to a 2000 study from the Institute of Medicine, up to 98,000 people per year die as a result of errors in hospitals—more than are killed by breast cancer, AIDS, or motor vehicle accidents. Some of these could be prevented by designing for error prevention, which is a cornerstone of usability and human factors engineering.
• 2/3 of all healthcare dollars spent on IT are spent on systems that are never used, or are used for less than three months. This is a sign of technology that has not been designed to fit well for its users or context of use.
• The home is increasingly becoming the center of care for many patients, and family members are often the primary caregivers. This makes it essential to provide information, labels, and devices that are easy for the public to use without training or expert knowledge.

The usability profession has established techniques for user research, clear writing, intuitive interface design, and usability evaluation, which can be applied to helping patients and their families get answers to their health-related questions and take better care of themselves, and making technology work more effectively in clinical environments.

This year, UPA-DC's observance of World Usability Day will focus on usability in health care. In particular, we will promote successful initiatives and raise awareness (among both the public and health care practitioners) of how applying usability principles results in safe, easy-to-use products and information systems.

More information is available at the DC-UPA web site: http://www.upa-dc-metro.org/events/2006/11-14-06.htm