Background The admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) module is used in the hospital information system (HIS) for the purposes of managing appointments, patient admission, daily control of hospital beds, planning surgery procedures, keeping up-to-date on patient discharges, and registering patient transfers within or outside the hospital. The present study aimed to evaluate the usability of ADT module of a HIS through usability testing and assess the relationship between the number of user interface problems and usability features (i.e. effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction). Methods This descriptive analytical study was conducted in Shahid Beheshti hospital in Kashan, Iran, in 2017. The participating users were eight students in their last semester of a Bachelor of Health Information Technology Sciences degree. First, the users were introduced to the module functions in a two-hour session; ten days later, the users were asked to perform scenarios designed based on seven tasks and take notes of the problems encountered in performing each task after it was over. Effectiveness was measured based on the rate of completing the tasks, efficiency based on the time taken to perform each task, and satisfaction based on the users’ answers to a satisfaction questionnaire. The relationship between these three usability features and the number of problems noted was assessed using Spearman’s test in SPSS version 16. Results Thirteen unique usability problems were identified from the perspective of the users. Effectiveness was rated as 58.9%, efficiency as 53.3%, and mean user satisfaction as 53.4 ± 10.6. The number of problems in each task had significant relationships to the effectiveness ( P = 0.009) and efficiency ( P = 0.016) scores. User satisfaction also had a significant relationship with the effectiveness ( P = 0.043) but not with the efficiency ( P = 0.230) scores. Conclusions In the view of the potential users, a HIS, used in more than 200 hospitals in a developing country, has several usability problems in its ADT module and its effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction were not acceptable. The number of usability problems in the HIS user interface affected the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of the system.

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Background:Hospital websites are important sources for patients to access health information.Aim:The purpose of this study was to develop the quality evaluation model for hospital websites.Methods:The quantitative study was conducted through the modified Delphi method in 2014-2015. The population of the study includes 10 experts were chosen by targeting non-randomized method. A questionnaire was prepared based on the prototype that was developed by research papers and related models. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by face validity and CVI and CVR estimation. Reliability was obtained by split-half method (α = 0.8). Experts’ opinions were collected through interview. Then, their frequency and percentage were determined. Items with options completely agree and agree over 75% was approved, items below 50% were removed, and items 50%–75% were removed after three interviews repetitions.Results:Most of the experts agreed about the pleasant and harmonious colors, the readable and consistent fonts (100%). The least frequency was allocated to correct grammar and words, support for multilingual and rapidly changing of displaying pages in the website with a frequency of 2 (20%).Conclusion:The minimum qualitative criteria for a website are usability, efficiency, user friendly, service, reliability and interaction.