Re: Patient-centered medicine & user-centered design

Hello,

(Related to the original posting, the link list below might be useful to the community who are interested in Health IT)

You might not know but since 2006 in the UK there has been a joint project with National Health Service (NHS) and Microsoft called the Common User Interface (CUI).

The project provides User Interface Design Guidance and Toolkit controls (software components are only available in Microsoft technology) that have been built using a user centred design process with experienced practitioners. Strangely from what I seen, most of Health IT seems to be lagging other industries in applying user experience methods to IT.

All of CUI is freely available from the NHS (England) at no cost and will remain so. While it is true that the UI doesn’t drive everything, we find that the stuff below gains professional acceptance.

1.If you are interested in looking at CUI outputs. Either go to:

www.cui.nhs.uk - This is the NHS site. All the CUI outputs are here there is a simple registration procedure or go to http://mscui.org - The Microsoft site. CUI guidance has Microsoft branding but its exactly the same information and includes Microsoft 's software components  (and greater resources devoted to the site) and it includes a couple of demonstrators (concept cars) showing off CUI these are outside the scope of the CUI project.

2. Progress is being made in the UK, the following UI standards
•       Address
•       Telephone
•       NHS number
•       Date and time
•       Gender and sex
•       Banner
•       Name
were approved as UK National Health Standards for IT in December – all of the rest  in the CUI project are on the slow moving conveyor belt towards this status.

Here's a couple of other areas you might be interested in.

3.      If you are interested in medication management  you could look at this. Medication Management Documentation and Prescribing Model is here http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/eprescribing

4.      HL7 and Terminology tools are here www.openhealthtools.org

We also have an ‘alerts’ UI programme running between our National Patient Safety Agency, several UK and US universities.


Finally the CUI project is opening up in 2010

The good news for CUI is that the NHS-Microsoft relationship is changing. In the near future, the work with Microsoft will continue but the NHS will open up the project to allow any other interested partners including other software vendors and open source providers to participate. Watch this space.

I hope this is helpful.



Stephen Corbett
Head of UI Design
Central Architecture Services
Technology Office
Department of Health Informatics Directorate





>>> Hal Shubin <[email protected]> 1/11/2010 2:38 PM >>>
I was talking with my primary care physician today about how un-patient-centered my recent hospital stay was. (See below for some examples.) He mentioned a seminar or class he teaches for residents about empathy and looking at medical care from the patient's point of view. I'm so glad he mentioned this because the experience made me want to find a way to apply what I know to fix the problem.

I'm sure there's not a lot of medical literature about this. Driving away, I started thinking about what there is in *our* literature, and in our methodologies that could help him. For example, maybe the idea of personas would be useful: they could work together to create personas for Sally SeniorCitizen, Andy Appendicitis, Uncle UnknownProblems and Polly Pregnant, and refer to them in their discussions.

Some of my consulting work has involved medical software and hardware, and I've done usability testing with physicians. But this is different. Have you done anything relevant that I could pass along? Or have any ideas that seem appropriate?

thanks-- hs

A few examples of how un-patient-focused my hospital stay was.
= I didn't mind having vitals checked every four hours around the clock -- it seems useful, and I wasn't sleeping well anyway.
= Nurses would do something and say they'd be back in (say) 20 minutes to check on the outcome, but it was much longer than that.
= Someone came in during the night and started asking questions without identifying himself -- how do I answer without knowing who and what he is?
= Two teams of doctors wanted to poke, probe and interview me when I was just too cold and uncomfortable, so I had to ask them to leave. They said they'd be back soon, but it was the next day.
= Another doctor wouldn't tell me what I should order when I was moved to a solid diet, he just vetoed all my suggestions; he said he'd come back later instead of helping me right then, but he sent a medical student three hours later. Etc.


- - - - - - - - - -
Hal Shubin  -  Interaction Design, Inc.
617 489 6595  -  www.user.com

    --------------------------------------------------------------
           Tip of the Day: Postings must be in plain text
     CHI-WEB: www.sigchi.org/web POSTINGS: mailto:[email protected]
              MODERATORS: mailto:[email protected]
       SUBSCRIPTION CHANGES & FAQ:  www.sigchi.org/web/faq.html
    --------------------------------------------------------------

    --------------------------------------------------------------
    Tip of the Day: Use the archives to research common questions
     CHI-WEB: www.sigchi.org/web POSTINGS: mailto:[email protected]
              MODERATORS: mailto:[email protected]
       SUBSCRIPTION CHANGES & FAQ:  www.sigchi.org/web/faq.html
    --------------------------------------------------------------



********************************************************************************************************************

This message may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please inform the
sender that you have received the message in error before deleting it.
Please do not disclose, copy or distribute information in this e-mail or take any action in reliance on its contents:
to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.

Thank you for your co-operation.

NHSmail is the secure email and directory service available for all NHS staff in England and Scotland
NHSmail is approved for exchanging patient data and other sensitive information with NHSmail and GSI recipients
NHSmail provides an email address for your career in the NHS and can be accessed anywhere
For more information and to find out how you can switch, visit www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/nhsmail

********************************************************************************************************************