A Usability Analysis Framework for Healthcare Information Technology

Healthcare organizations are investing in healthcare information technology HIT to improve quality and outcomes. However, HIT has also been known to introduce unintended consequences and adverse effects. The adverse effects range from process changes to serious clinical errors. In order to ensure the safety of healthcare information technologies, the authors propose a usability analysis framework for healthcare information technology that can help identify, classify and prioritize potential errors. Such a framework can help design better usability studies specifically targeted at studying technology-induced errors and therefore help in the design of safer healthcare information technologies.