Case Studies
Telus Health: Macadamian helps Telus Health improve the usability of its hospital orders management software
A typical hospital runs on “orders.” Requests for tests, sample collection, vital sign checks, IVs, treatment plans and more all happen as a result of an order being given and a clinician workflow being generated. The Oacis CPOE (Computerized Physician Order Entry) software from TELUS Health enables electronic ordering, generates worklists for each member of the healthcare team and alerts clinicians about potential duplicate orders and treatment conflicts.
The recently formed TELUS Health Solutions user centered design (UCD) team led the design of new functionality in Oacis CPOE. Through a heuristic evaluation, they identified a number of risk areas in the design that they wanted to evaluate through usability testing. To get an unbiased perspective, they called Macadamian to conduct the testing.
Ensuring Usability
As part of good user centered design practice, the TELUS health solutions UCD team wanted to complete usability testing on the new features to ensure they were intuitive and easy to use for health care professionals. As per best practice, they sought an expert, independent user experience professional to complete the testing, as even the best designers can get married to their designs.
The Macadamian team worked with the TELUS team to connect with doctors and nurses at Telus customer sites and conduct usability tests on a beta version of the software. After aggregating the results of the usability tests, Macadamian initially recommended a number of important changes that were quickly implemented by the TELUS Health team. Following the initial changes, Macadamian also recommended a series of longer-term changes that will improve the workflow and overall user experience of the system in subsequent product releases.
“We were impressed by Macadamian’s depth of domain knowledge, and how quickly they came up to speed on our product” says Suzanne Rochford, Director, User Centered Design at TELUS Health. “Getting real-world feedback from our users is invaluable as we develop the next version of Oacis.”
"After working on Oacis for so many years, it was refreshing for our developers to hear first-hand that many of their assumptions about the Oacis User Interface aren’t necessarily obvious to the users out in the field." Says Brian Beaton, HMI Prime Team Lead at TELUS Health.
By offering a direct and objective channel for obtaining end-user feedback, Macadamian has provided TELUS Health with a wealth of user information that will inform the future development of the product and ensure that it is well received by hospital users.
COMPANY PROFILE:
TELUS Health Solutions, headquartered in Longueuil, Quebec aims to lead the change in Canadian healthcare through innovative and proven information communication technology (ICT).
