Improving COVID-19 Research of University Hospitals in Germany: Formative Usability Evaluation of the CODEX Feasibility Portal

Abstract

Background Within the German “Network University Medicine,” a portal is to be developed to enable researchers to query on novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) data from university hospitals for assessing the feasibility of a clinical study. Objectives The usability of a prototype for federated feasibility queries was evaluated to identify design strengths and weaknesses and derive improvement recommendations for further development. Methods In the course of a remote usability test with the thinking-aloud method and posttask interviews, 15 clinical researchers evaluated the usability of a prototype of the Feasibility Portal. The identified usability problems were rated according to severity, and improvement recommendations were derived. Results The design of the prototype was rated as simple, intuitive, and as usable with little effort. The usability test reported a total of 26 problems, 8 of these were rated as “critical.” Usability problems and revision recommendations focus primarily on improving the visual distinguishability of selected inclusion and exclusion criteria, enabling a flexible approach to criteria linking, and enhancing the free-text search. Conclusion Improvement proposals were developed for these user problems which will guide further development and the adaptation of the portal to user needs. This is an important prerequisite for correct and efficient use in everyday clinical work in the future. Results can provide developers of similar systems with a good starting point for interface conceptualizations. The methodological approach/the developed test guideline can serve as a template for similar evaluations.

The Architecture of a Feasibility Query Portal for Distributed COVID-19 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Patient Data Repositories: Design and Implementation Study

“…A usability analysis of our prototype revealed that it is simple and intuitive. It also showed 26 problems, 8 of which were rated as “critical” [ 33 ]. However, usability problems were focused on the presentation of the UI or the ontology and will have no impact on the architectural decisions made.…”

“…As part of our project, we performed a usability analysis based on our prototype implementation of the UI, the results of which were fed back into our development process to improve the user experience. This evaluation is described in more detail in a separate publication [ 33 ].…”

Das Netzwerk Universitätsmedizin: Technisch-organisatorische Ansätze für Forschungsdatenplattformen

“…Für die Erhebung der Daten, die bisher noch nicht Bestandteil der elektronischen Krankenakte waren, wurden Datenerfassungssysteme (REDCap und DIS) mit standardisierten Data Dictionaries und einem vordefinierten Extraktionsprozess zur Generierung der FHIR-GECCO-Formate bereitgestellt. Für föderierte Machbarkeitsabfragen wurden diese FHIR-Server über zentral entwickelte Komponenten und sichere Datenverbindungen an ein Abfrageportal zur klinischen Charakterisierung von COVID-19-Patient*innen angebunden [ 6 – 8 ]. Auf Basis dieser dezentralen COVID-19-Forschungsdatenrepositorien konnten wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zum Verlauf der COVID-19-Pandemie und zu ihren Auswirkungen auf die stationäre Versorgung in den UK bereits im Sommer 2020 gewonnen werden [ 9 – 11 ].…”

A Hybrid Architecture (CO-CONNECT) to Facilitate Rapid Discovery and Access to Data Across the United Kingdom in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Development Study

“…We reviewed other existing COVID data efforts across the world [81][82][83][84][85][86]. Most projects focus on the analysis of data sets that were already known to the researchers, whereas CO-CONNECT (as well as CODEX [84,85]) also provides the capability to search for specific cohorts of data for feasibility analysis across population-wide data.…”