Macadamian Blog
6 Must-Know Tips To Implement An Effective EMR
This recent article from Health Leaders media lists the top 6 ingredients to building and implementing an effective EHR. In short, they say:
- Realize that the EHR will not solve your problems.
- Identify EHR stakeholders and involve them in the implementation process.
- Keep it simple with as few systems as possible.
- Remember that communication is essential.
- Recognize that paper will never disappear completely.
- Keep usability in mind.
I had to smile at point 6 regarding usability. On the HIMSS discussion boards I follow, every few days someone starts a discussion about "What's the most important consideration regarding EHRs?", which inevitably starts a flame war over interoperability and which standards to follow.
And eventually, somewhere at the end of the heated debate, someone points out - "who cares what kind of interoperability you have if your system is not usable? HL7 v2, v3, CCD, CCR, Continua... does it really matter if the system doesn't meet your users' needs?"
So I smiled as I imagined the editor of the Health Leaders article looking through a draft of the top 5 considerations when implementing an EHR, and he had that same afterthought - "wait a second, we need a point #6 - usability!!"
Actually, the other 5 points all deal with usability and UCD (user-centered design) too, it's just a lot of people probably don't realize it. Point 2, for example, "Identifying and involving stakeholders" is a first step to uncovering user needs. Point 5, "Recognize that paper will never disappear completely" could be the result of interviews or user testing methodologies.
Don't get me wrong, it is great that the industry is slowly realizing the importance of usability, and that organizations like HIMSS are publishing whitepapers on EHR UI best practices. But usability isn't just a collection of best practices that can be summarized in a document.
It isn't just an afterthought to "keep in mind". It's an entire process, involving thorough communication and study.
About the Author
Didier Thizy is the Director, Healthcare Divison at Macadamian, specializing in patient record and medical device software. Didier is a regular columnist on Macadamian's Health IT Insights, a blog and forum for healthcare software development.
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+ Comments
EMR implementations frequently cite effective communication, collaboration and the development of shared, achievable EMR goals as key factors for success. Foundation of collaboration and communication will help the practice successfully get through more difficult times during the EMR implementation.
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Feb 24, 2010
01:46
You are right - to obtain usability is a process. But not a process of testing a system after it is built. It is a process that does start with your stakeholders but must also extend to your users. Healthcare has so many different user types that will interact with an EMR. All of those similar and disparate needs will need to be extracted, prioritized, and designed.
The usability process is about design. How are EMRs being designed for the user? When we incorporate design, the usability will be an intuitive application that will take EMRs and healthcare where is needs to go.