At the same meeting where Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, commented about healthcare IT, there was another interesting comment by Eric Lander about the state of researching EMR and healthcare IT. Here’s his comment:
“My sense is that we don’t respect this stuff,” said PCAST co-chair Eric Lander. “We respect the cancer genome, but not checklists. What do we need to do to send a signal to the next generation of researchers that this is a high-class, worthy thing to do? What would it take to move the needle?”
I agree. I’ve done the searching through the journals for well done EMR research and found very little. Not that research is the end all be all, but it can provide insight that can’t be found other ways.
Absolutely the point I try and make every day – thanks, John, for calling this out. Here at Electronic Ink we spend our days helping our clients understand not only how to make software usable but, more importantly, what their customers need to be able to accomplish with that software. Taken from that perspective, the design of an application can be accomplished that intuitively supports user goals rather than simply providing sets of features. Additionally, by implementing such a formal design process, we can uncover latent requirements (those that users don’t realize they have) and provide flexible and creative solutions.
Why is this important, you ask? Because sometimes the best solution is more than an electronic version of the currently used solution. Only a good designer can provide that sort of insight.