Write a 750-1,000 word paper on the usability of health informatics applications
HCI670Week 1 Assignment Human Factors Engineering Paper
The purpose of this assignment is to explain the principles of design usability and analyze the impact of human factors on electronic applications for health care systems.
Write a 750-1,000 word paper on the usability of health informatics applications. Include the following:
Describe an example of an electronic health record (EHR) application used in a health care setting.
Describe the key elements of design usability for that application.
Analyze and describe how human factors or heuristic principles affect the electronic EHR in the chosen application.
Recommend an improvement to the chosen electronic application.
Provide a rationale for the suggested improvement based on knowledge of design usability.
Support your findings with a minimum of two scholarly resources.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. Refer to the LopesWrite Technical Support articles for assistance.
In several countries, we are moving beyond issues related to implementation and change management of health information technology (IT); today, the basic IT infrastructure is in place and health care organizations are investing in designing and implementing the next generation of health IT “by-products”, such as clinical dashboard, status display, clinical decision support, and patient-facing technologies. Usability and other human factors challenges with health IT continue to be reported, as illustrated in a New Yorker article by Atul Gawande entitled “Why doctors hate their computers” 1 . The experience of usability problems with health IT extends to other health care professionals, including nurses 2 . Staggers et al. 2 gathered input on health IT problems experienced by nurses from a group of nursing leaders, IT experts, engineers and human factors experts. The consensus among the group of 27 experts was that “current vendors do not yet understand how to support nurses’ work, their critical thinking, and decision making” (page 192). For instance, current EHR designs allow for single patient views whereas nurses care for complex groups of patients in a non-linear, non-standardized manner. Patients also experience usability challenges with health information technologies, such as patient portals 3 .
Over time, implementation of health IT may lead to benefits for patients as demonstrated by the study by Lin et al. 4 , which shows positive outcomes (e.g. hospital mortality) associated with health IT after sufficient time and effort has been spent on implementation, maintenance, and improvement of the system. However, we cannot rely on “time and effort” and just hope that positive outcomes of health IT implementation will happen after a while; in the meantime, negative outcomes may occur, which can endanger patients (e.g., hazards and medical errors), frustrate healthcare professionals, and impede their performance (e.g., burnout). We need to be vigilant and proactive in order to achieve benefits with health IT and avoid negative patient safety outcomes 5 . Human factors and human-centered design play a critical role in ensuring that health IT is well designed and fits with clinical and patient workflows.
We conducted a review of the literature on human factors and usability of health IT published between 2016 and 2019 in various databases: PubMed/Medline, Google Scholar, and PsycINFO. We also searched recent tables of content of major health informatics journals, such as JAMIA, IJMI, ACI, and Health Informatics. Building on chapters published in previous IMIA Yearbooks 6 – 8 , we continue to see reports of usability problems with health IT. Emerging literature shows that development and implementation of human-centered design methods to use existing IT infrastructure can create value for patients and clinicians, for instance, in implementing usable technologies, e.g., clinical decision support (CDS) for supporting clinical decision making and care coordination. This chapter also highlights new issues in human-centered design of health IT, such as design of health IT for teams.
Important information for writing discussion questions and participation
Welcome to class
Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to
I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.
Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.
If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.
Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.
Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.
I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!
Hi Class,
Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.
Contact me if you have any questions.
Important information on Writing a Discussion Question
- Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
- There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
- Include in-text citations in your response
- Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
- Follow APA-7th edition
- Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor
- A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
- Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
- Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
- Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
- Follow APA 7th edition
- Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
- Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
- Here are some helpful links
- The is a great resource
