Clinical Archtect and User Centred Design
NOTE: This post is a follow up from the overall post on what does a clinical architect need to know.
Usability of systems in an important issue. Although it is not one that is first thought of when one thinks of architecture, which is a shame. User Centredness really should be a large part of what a Clinical Architect considers during design.
Of course, detailed user centred design work is not something that the clinical architect can do single handedly, especially in large organizations. Keeping the mantra in the forefront is important to making workable systems and that is something the Clinical Architect should do.
I think about user centredness at a few levels:
- The single user interacting with one information system
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- How do the screens flow, does that support the work, is the right information where it is needed, are movements from keyboard to mouse and back streamlined, etc.
- The single user interacting with systemS (plural) or the greater system -
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- Where does a user need to go to get information, what does their day look like, etc. Are they interfacing witn 3 systems to do one job, what are the greater outputs, are they hand modifying those outputs and why.
- The multi-user system -
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- How does the CIS impact provider – patient interactions and how does it impact provider-provider interactions? What intentional changes are occurring and what UNintentional changes are occurring (or could occur) with the implementation.
Together these views can give an Architect a good view into how the systems work as a whole for a user in their day to day work. Typically, one would consider
I’ve written about the bio-psycho-social approach to usability before and it is a useful framework to consider usability as well as user centred design.
In healthcare, there is also the idea of being patient centred as well. This is an extremely important perspective to consider. My recent research has shown how fragmented a patient’s care is and how they information can be scattered across literally dozens of records (see broken records).
As a final note, here is a recently ISO / IEC 62366 summary from User Focus that discusses usability of medical devices.
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