It was a pleasure to work with you, as you and your team made this process a more pleasant experience for our team and the participants.
Karen Perry
Many EHRs really do suck, as ZDoggMD described in his very popular parody video 'EHR state of Mind'. But without some nudge towards an improved user experience many of the "less than optimal" EHRs will only get worse as they grow and Engineering-centric developers add more and more features on top of a poorly designed information architecture.
Vehicles are not allowed to be sold in the USA unless they have meet strict safety standards, why isn't this the same for EHRs?
Don't like 30 clicks to order Ambien? How about 50!
Usability in healthcare is critical to patient safety, but way too many vendors have short-cut their "Safety-enhanced Design" (ONC's euphemism for Usability) in order to get their clients Meaningful Use funding. MU Stage 3 at least has some teeth with regards to SED. We hope it isn't dead and buried.
Is it just greed? Do EHR vendors choose to ignore the research and develop a product that doesn't match the mental model of their users? Or are they just uninformed? Do they choose to be uninformed? Is ignorance really bliss?
We've had the tag line "Usability starts with you" for a while--and remember when a senior developer wrote back "that it ends in "Y.""
In healthcare the why is obvious - it saves lives.
Don't believe me? See the Joint commission alert 54