Physician Responses to Handheld Presentation of Clinical Evidence: Analysis of Group Differences

The Evidence at the Point of Care (EPoCare) project (Takeshita, Davis, Straus, 2002) is examining how to put clinical evidence on mobile devices to meet physicians' information needs at the point of care. Forty-seven physicians, including family physicians, general internists and medical residents, participated in usability testing with prototypes implemented on two different form factors (a tablet-style PC and a PDA-style handheld). During the testing physicians were asked to describe their impression of the prototype and to indicate their agreement with 20 statements concerning the prototype implementations. The three user groups differed in how they valued device portability and screen size. Family physicians wanted larger screen size and were less concerned with portability, while internists wanted portability and were less concerned with screen size. Residents wanted both portability and large screen size. Cluster analysis was used to identify four clusters of physicians, varying by age, amount of time in clinical practice, and frequency of use of search engines and medical databases. Differences in preferences about format of information were present amongst these clusters. This study demonstrates how large sample usability testing can be used to develop customization strategies for mobile applications, for designing both form factor and content.