Paul Roemer, VP Client Strategy, Electronic Ink.
Times are perilous, and they ain’t a-changin. As Europe focuses its attention on whether the Euro will become a collector’s item, and the Middle East eagerly awaits the chance to lower the amount it pays for air conditioning because of the surplus of electricity that will be available from all of Iran’s nuclear reactors, America is all a-twitter about what Angelina Jolie was wearing at the Oscars.
No wonder the impact of the billions being spent on healthcare IT has taken a back seat.
Ask yourself, how good is your EHR? Does it do what you want it to do? Does it do it in the way you need it to do it? If it was your decision, would you have spent a hundred or two-hundred million dollars for it?
Okay, get the smirk off your face.
I have been writing recently a lot about the difference between user acceptance (UA) and the usability of large business systems like EHR systems. A business system is a lot more than an IT application. It also includes process and people — users.
Achieving high user acceptance is easy. Implement one system and make everyone use it. Check the box. User acceptance only involves the IT application: the EHR. UA does not measure the value of the business system to the users; it simply measures the percentage of users.
Usability is a testament to whether or not the system, in this case the EHR, adds value to the organization, to its users. Does it make them better, more effective, more efficient? The secret sauce towards achieving good usability is the addition of design.
Here is an example of a company with two business systems depicting the difference between UA and usability. The company is Apple, the two business systems are the iPhone and iTunes.
iPhone system:
- Phone, camera, game player, GPS, email, SMS, MP3 player
- One button
- No training required
- Great usability
iTunes system:
- Web shopping program for purchasing services to use on Apple products
- Full keyboard
- High learning curve
- Poor usability, poor user experience
- High UA — users have no other choice
Brothers from different mothers. Their usability is so different that it is difficult to believe both business systems came from the same company.
- One business system lets you do everything using one button; the other barely lets you do anything using 61 keys.
- One is intuitive, one is anything but
I am willing to bet your EHR reminds your users more of iTunes than it does the iPhone. You can choose to accept it as is, or you can make it better. The great thing about business systems, unlike products, is you can choose to apply design to a poor business system and gain tremendous value for little investment. Or not.
jbormel says
Paul,
Terrific insight. And, for the first few years of the roll-out, there was tethering required between the two vastly different systems. It sounds like you might be implicitly suggesting that Usability, User Adoption, and a obligate, multi-step deployment roadmap are required? Is that a step too far? And, if not, is that concordant with the Meaningful Use Staging, Incentives and Adjustment (penalty) framework we are working within?