Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Despite promising results in medical informatics research and the development of a large number of different systems, few systems get beyond a prototype state and are really used in practice. Among other factors, the lack of explicit user focus is one main reason.

The research projects presented in this paper follow a user-centered system development approach based on extensive work analyses in interdisciplinary working groups, taking into account human cognitive performance. Different medical and health-care specialists, together with researchers in human-computer interaction and medical informatics, specify future clinical work scenarios. Special focus is put on analysis and design of the information and communication flow and on exploration of intuitive visualization and interaction techniques for clinical information. Adequate choice of the technical access device is made depending on the user’s work situation. It is the purpose of this paper to apply this method in two different research projects and thereby to show its potential for designing clinically useful systems that do support and not hamper clinical work. These research projects cover IT support for chairside work in dentistry (http://www.dis.uu.se/mdi/research/projects/orquest) and ICT support for home health care of elderly citizens (http://www.medsci.uu.se/mie/project/closecare).

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Etzkowitz H, Leydesdorff L (1997). Universities in the global knowledge economy: a triple helix of university-industry-government relations. London, UK: Pinter.

Haux R, Hasman A, Leven FJ, Protti DJ, Musen MA (1997). Education and training in medical informatics. In: Handbook of medical informatics. van Bemmel JH, Musen MA, editors. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, pp. 537–547.

ISO 13407 (1999). Human-centred design processes for interactive systems. Geneva: International Organisation for Standardization.

Kaplan B (2001). Evaluating informatics applications—clinical decision support systems literature review. Int J Med Inform 64:15–37.

Koch S, Wagner I-V, Seipel S, Schneider W (1998a). Controlled diagnosis-oriented enhancement of automatically segmented radiographs in dentistry. Comput Meth Programs Biomed 57:95–103.

Koch S, Wagner I-V, Schneider W, Han F (1998b). New concept of an integrated IT&T-based dental workstation for quality assurance in oral health care. In: MEDINFO 98 Proceedings. Cesnik B, McGray AT, Scherrer J-R, editors. Amsterdam: IOS Press, pp. 107–111.

Koch S, Wagner I-V, Schneider W (2000). Effective and quality assured use of digital radiography in clinical practice, Int J Comput Dentistry 3:107–118.

Lave J, Wenger E (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Nielsen J (1994). Usability engineering. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

10.

Patel VL, Kushniruk AW (1997). Human-computer interaction in health care. In: Handbook of medical informatics. van Bemmel JH, Musen MA, editors. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, pp. 473–493.

11.

Schneider W (1992). What renders dental informatics specific? In: Dental informatics. Abbey LM, Zimmermann JL, editors. New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 93–106.

12.

Schneider W, Wagner I-V (1993). The use of electronical clinical recording and pro-active learning in dentistry and dental education. In: Proceedings, 19th Meeting of the Association for Dental Education in Europe. Scott JJ, editor. Dublin: Atrium Productions Ltd., pp. 29–35.

13.

Wagner I-V (1988). Work analyses in dental practices. Uppsala, Sweden: UDAC, unpublished data, 1988.

14.

Wagner I-V (1992). The use of information technology for continuous improvement of patient care. In: Dental informatics. Abbey LM, Zimmerman JL, editors. New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 77–91.

15.

Wagner I-V, Schneider W (1991). Computer-based decision support in dentistry. J Dent Educ 55:263–267.

16.

Wagner I-V, Schneider W (1998). Die interaktive elektronische Krankengeschichte zur Unterstützung im klinischen Management. In: Computer in Zahnarztpraxis und Dentallabor. EDV-Jahrbuch ’98. Duddeck D, editor. Heidelberg: Hüthig, pp. 280–284.

Designing Clinically Useful Systems: Examples from Medicine and Dentistry

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References