Hospitals across the country have been moving toward a general electronic medical record to provide a single point of access to patient data for clinicians and staff. Since 1997, the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) has adopted an inhouse-developed web interface to present patient information drawn from a large data warehouse. This electronic medical record is called CareWeb. The Transplant Center at UMHS has its own system that draws from CareWeb data but also includes supplemental information on transplant patients. This system is called the Organ Transplant Information System (OTIS). |
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Two groups of students at the University of Michigan School of Information have undertaken class projects to evaluate CareWeb and OTIS's interfaces and propose innovate designs for selected features. The body of work is currently being refined and has been distributed to Medical Center Information Technology administration to provide a perspective from students in the field of human-computer interaction.
Our evaluation group devised a set of single-user and collaborative heuristics. The group member least familiar with OTIS walked through OTIS functionality as the other team members observed how well the application met the heuristics' criteria.
Four post-operative nurses at the Kidney Transplant Center served as participants for OTIS usability tests we conducted at the hospital. We designed two main tasks and recorded participants' screen activity, audio, and (in most cases) video. We analyzed the results and deliver recommendations in our report.
We electronically distributed a survey to clinicians and staff at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) for one week. Our intention was to analyze assessments of CareWeb made by UMHS clinicians and clinical support staff via an online survey to evaluate the functionality, usability, and aesthetics of the CareWeb system.
For the personas and scenarios, our group interviewed six members of the University of Michigan Hospital staff holding a variety of job positions. In the interviews our aim was to gain an understanding of the details of each user's specific job profile within the hospital, their use of CareWeb, and the general workflow. We obtained anecdotal evidence for what CareWeb users need for their daily routines.
To better understand the information architecture of CareWeb, we made a Generalized Transition Network (GTN) of selected CareWeb features. In the diagram, we focused on the functions of patient search, medical documents, message inbox, and the patient problem summary list.
The group embarked on a need-finding mission for the short period of time that physicians have to review the patient record prior to a visit. Based on our observations and our imaginations, we designed a visual prototype for the documents feature to facilitate this part of the provider's workflow.
SI 622:
Evaluation of Systems and Services
Professor: Suresh Bhavnani
Ayse Buyuktur
David Hutchful
Cheung-Lun Li
Sean Munson
Rupa Patel
SI 649:
Information Visualization
Professor: Barbara Mirel
Ryan Cannon
Rupa Patel
Melissa Perez
Matthew Wilson
Special acknowledgment goes to Joseph Norman, Wendy Behnke, Silas Norman, Jim Dean, and many others at UMHS.