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DOI: 10.1055/a-2404-2129
Realizing the Full Potential of Clinical Decision Support: Translating Usability Testing into Routine Practice in Health Care Operations
Abstract
Background Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools have a mixed record of effectiveness, often due to inadequate alignment with clinical workflows and poor usability. While there is a consensus that usability testing methods address these issues, in practice, usability testing is generally only used for selected projects (such as funded research studies). There is a critical need for CDS operations to apply usability testing to all CDS implementations.
Objectives In this State of the Art/Best Practice paper, we share challenges with scaling usability in health care operations and alternative methods and CDS governance structures to enable usability testing as a routine practice.
Methods We coalesce our experience and results of applying guerilla in situ usability testing to over 20 projects in a 1-year period with the proposed solution.
Results We demonstrate the feasibility of adopting “guerilla in situ usability testing” in operations and their effectiveness in incorporating user feedback and improving design.
Conclusion Although some methodological rigor was relaxed to accommodate operational speed, the benefits outweighed the limitations. Broader adoption of usability testing may transform CDS implementation and improve health outcomes.
Protection of Human Subjects
No human subjects were involved in this perspective. In discussion with the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta IRB, projects applying guerilla in situ usability testing were deemed as quality improvement projects and therefore nonhuman subjects research.
Publication History
Received: 03 June 2024
Accepted: 25 August 2024
Accepted Manuscript online:
27 August 2024
Article published online:
04 December 2024
© 2024. Thieme. All rights reserved.
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