Electronic Health Records: Physician's Perspective on Usability

Abstract

The usability of electronic health records (EHRs) has received increased attention as it has been identified as one of the key barriers to adoption of EHRs. Every day, health care workers face many usability issues with EHRs such as workflows that do not match clinical processes, alert fatigue (both visual and audio), information overload and frustration with what is perceived as excessive clicks during routine tasks. All this contributes to frustration, and, ultimately, impacts patient care. But what does it mean to have a ‘usable’ application? Why are EHRs hard to use? This panel brings together practicing physicians trained in medical informatics to provide their unique and front-line perspective on what the real issues are with EHRs and how human factors affects usage. We will address three questions: (1) Why is usability a hard problem in EHRs? (2) From a user's view, what is the cost of poor usability? And (3) what can be done to increase adoption and usage of EHRs in the clinical setting?

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