Designing an Information Querying Interface for a Rheumatoid Arthritis Patient Record System

Physicians need to integrate large amounts of information from patient records to determine their patients' current status. Retrieving and querying patient related information involves cognitive processes. To design an easy to use and effective querying interface for modern electronic medical records, a good understanding of the cognitive processes involved in patient related information querying is essential. In this paper cognitive work analysis (CWA) is discussed as a tool for understanding the work domain and for guiding the development of new electronic patient record interfaces, in our case for use by rheumatologists. In particular, CWA is discussed from the point of view of the abstraction hierarchy (AH) framework, and an initial AH of the patient information system work domain is presented.