Improving Quality of Care in Virtual Visits: Heuristic Evaluations of the User Interface in Telehealth

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the growing rate of reliance on telehealth. Beyond the benefits of telehealth for patients and healthcare providers during atypical circumstances, the changes prompted by the pandemic have possibly altered the position of telehealth to the point that virtual communication will become the new normal. Therefore, the importance of designing an interface to facilitate user interaction with the system and consequently with one another is of utmost importance. Building on Nielsen’s usability heuristics and mapping them to the six aspects of quality of care introduced by the Institute of Medicine, we identify the design features that have the highest impact on the quality of care. Our analysis shows that error prevention and recovery is the most influential design feature, followed by help and documentation, visibility of the system, match between the system and the real world, flexibility and efficiency of use, and user control and freedom.