. "Appendix C: Observations, Consequences, and Opportunities: The Site Visits of the Committee." Computational Technology for Effective Health Care: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2009.
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Computational Technology for Effective Health Care: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions
TABLE C.1 Committee’s Observations from Its Site Visits
Computer records are divided among task-specific transaction-processing systems
Users have to know where to look
Individual manually annotated work lists are the norm
Synthesis depends on intra-team conversation
Problem recognition is left to chance
Team members waste time getting information in the form they want to use
Techniques to synthesize and summarize information about the patient in and across systems with drill-downs for detail (S/R)
Mechanisms to focus on a constellation of related factors (S/R)
Single search box that returns all appropriate information in the appropriate format (R)
Alerts to problems or trends for investigation (S/R)
“Virtual patient” displays leveraging biological and disease models to reduce multiple data inputs to intelligent summaries of key human systems (R)
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Clinical user interfaces mimic their paper predecessors
The flow sheet is the predominant display construct
No standardization of location of information or use of symbols and color
Font size is challenging
Important information and trends are easily overlooked
Cognitive burden of absorbing the information detracts from thinking about what the information means
Design reflecting human and safety factors (S)
Automatic capture and use of context (what, who, when…) (S)
Techniques to represent and capture data at multiple levels of abstraction (Care—plan, order, charting; data—raw signal, concept derived from the signal; biology) (S/R)
