Usability Evaluation of Laboratory and Radiology Information Systems Integrated into a Hospital Information System

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the usability of widely used laboratory and radiology information systems. Three usability experts independently evaluated the user interfaces of Laboratory and Radiology Information Systems using heuristic evaluation method. They applied Nielsen's heuristics to identify and classify usability problems and Nielsen's severity rating to judge their severity. Overall, 116 unique heuristic violations were identified as usability problems. In terms of severity, 67 % of problems were rated as major and catastrophic. Among 10 heuristics, "consistency and standards" was violated most frequently. Moreover, mean severity of problems concerning "error prevention" and "help and documentation" heuristics was higher than of the others. Despite widespread use of specific healthcare information systems, they suffer from usability problems. Improving the usability of systems by following existing design standards and principles from the early phased of system development life cycle is recommended. Especially, it is recommended that the designers design systems that inhibit the initiation of erroneous actions and provide sufficient guidance to users.

Evaluating the Usability of a Nationwide Pharmacy Information System in Iran: Application of Nielson’s Heuristics

“…Our results indicated that the heuristics "consistency and standard" and "recognition rather than recall" have the largest number of violations, with the lowest number of violations related to "error prevention" and "Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors" heuristics. These results are similar to the results of other studies, such as the those conducted by Khajouei et al, Atashi et al, and Nabovati et al in Iran (25)(26)(27), and also the studies conducted by Choi and Bakken, Georgsson et al, Joshi et al, and Mirkovic et al in countries other than Iran, which reported a high number of violations concerning these heuristics (28)(29)(30)(31). On the other hand, the unexpected results of this study indicated that the severity of 60.8% of all violations is major and catastrophic, which accounts for more than half of the identified violations and, in this case, and efficiency of the systems, satisfaction of their users, and hospital's financial issues.…”

Prioritizing Barriers to Successful Implementation of Hospital Information Systems

“…Within this class of barriers, challenges such as technical problems related to system design, error in data entry and lack of productivity had the highest priorities for system implementation. The poor design of the system can lead to inefficiency, user frustration, errors and eventually dissatisfaction and rejection [24,25]. It can also result in undesirable changes in working routines of health care providers, miscommunications and introducing a new organizational structure which is not acceptable by many providers [26].…”

Exploring pregnant women interest and anxiety to use the Internet and their perception and trust toward online information

“…Professional layout of the designed website is applied as a criterion for judgment about the website reliability by a few numbers of the participants. Therefore, following user-centered approaches, when designing websites, can attract the users' attention and increase their interest in using this technology (37). This study has a limitation.…”