Entries tagged with ehr - Channel 10

Microsoft Healthcare Common User Interface: Now available free worldwide

bcrounse — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:48:00 GMT

Anyone who works in healthcare knows that many of today’s clinical software applications leave a lot to be desired when it comes to “user experience”. Unlike ubiquitous, commodity software used in other businesses, healthcare applications are highly proprietary and often based on legacy technologies. Clinicians find that much of what’s available today is often too hard to use. Becoming proficient on these clinical applications requires lots of training and that can mean taking already scarce healthcare workers off-line for days or weeks at a time. Worse yet, even if clinicians become proficient on one vendor’s solution, they are likely to encounter something entirely different in every hospital where they work, requiring even more training. But what if there was a common, more standardized user interface for clinical applications? What if the user experience was pretty much the same no matter where a clinician worked? Would doctors, nurses and other clinical workers be better served?

Last July on this Blog I told you about an ambitious project to develop a standardized user interface to administrative and clinical systems. The project was launched more than a year ago by Microsoft and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. It is part of a country-wide upgrade of the data spine, clinical and administrative applications used by the NHS.

Based on that work, Microsoft has launched The Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI) web site. It provides Design Guidance and controls that allow a new generation of safer, more usable and compelling health applications to be quickly and easily created. In this special video edition of my House Calls for Healthcare Professionals series, we take a look at the the work that's been going on at the NHS and how that work, through the MSCUI, now offers promise to improve worker satisfaction and patient safety around the world. Enjoy the show!

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft Corporation

Downloads: iPod, MP3, PSP, WMA, WMV, WMV (High), Zune

Program Guests

Dr. Mike Bainbridge is a former general medical practitioner who now leads the Clinical Architecture team at NHS Connecting for
Health, a group that delivers innovations in hardware design, clinical interface design and interfaces to the electronic medical record for both healthcare professionals and citizens.

Stephen Corbett is Head of UI Design for NHS Connecting for Health where he evangelizes the user-centred design approach to building software. Since graduating in Ergonomics in 1988, he has been working in the field of software usability in various industries.

Andrew Kirby is a Director at Microsoft UK where he is responsible for the delivery of solutions and services to the National Health Service which includes the delivery of the Common User Interface Programme.

A Common User Interface to Clinical Systems

bcrounse — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:47:00 GMT

On October 21st, 2005, I wrote an entry on this Blog about the need for a more common and intuitive user interface to clinical information systems. Here's part of that entry:

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Jim Lynch, R.N. is quoted by Health Data Management's on-line news service on remarks he recently made during a presentation at the 77th Convention and Exhibit of the American Health Information Management Association. In his address, "Electronic Medical Records: Expect the Unexpected", Mr. Lynch recounts the plaudits and pitfalls encountered at Oklahoma City-based Integris Health during the implementation of their EMR. He says, “A major part of the problem was that the electronic record was not easy to use--the interface is not as simple as Microsoft Word, and many physicians had absolutely no computer skills.”

Indeed! Why is it that EMR interfaces have to be so challenging for clinicians? The typical community physician in many American cities admits patients to more than one hospital. In my own community, it's not unusual for docs to call on three or four different hospitals. One hospital might use Meditech; another IDX; another Cerner; and yet another something else. Even if any one of these systems had the "perfect" user interface, how can a clinician become proficient on all of them? How much training would that take!

Bill Crounse, MD

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I am now extremely pleased to tell you about something that I believe may be the tipping point in moving us toward a common user interface to clinical systems, perhaps worldwide. For the past couple of years, Microsoft has been working with administrators, clinicians and other experts in the United Kingdom to design a common user interface for clinical and administrative systems at the National Health Service. With the consent of the NHS and its Connecting for Health initiative, the design guidelines and tools are now being made available to developers around the world with the launch of the CUI Website.

As noted on the website, design guidance has been produced through a rigorous user-centred design process that incorporates primary and secondary research, usability testing, consultation with software providers and integrated hazard assessments. Patient Safety Assessments (PSAs) are continually performed to ensure the Design Guidance meets safety concerns.

The guidance is targeted at both existing clinical applications and those that are being designed and architected right now. The second part of this release is the implementation of much of that guidance in the form of control libraries for both WinForms 2.0 and ASP.NET. The website contains explanation and samples for each of the Web controls with the Codeplex project hosting a download of both the Winforms and the ASP.NET Control library.

Example of Common User Interface Design

If you are a developer of applications used in healthcare, an IT professional, or just someone who is passionate about clinical information systems, I urge you to become familiar with this excellent work, and help us make it even better by joining the dialogue here on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/mscui). Take a look at the CUI Website and be sure to watch the introductory video.

My thanks to our Microsoft UK team and our colleagues at the National Health Service for providing leadership in addressing a much needed solution that will improve patient safety while providing a much easier to use, more consistent interface to clinical systems.

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft Corporation

Employer-driven Electronic Health Records: A needed catalyst for healthcare IT?

bcrounse — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:01:00 GMT

I've commented before on this Blog that much of the true innovation I see in the implementation of advanced information technology solutions in healthcare, particularly electronic health and medical records, is happening outside of the United States. There are two reasons why this is so. First, most healthcare in other countries is controlled and delivered through the public sector. Decisions about, and investment in, healthcare information technology are made by regional or national government agencies. Second, many nations are able to jump ahead of the U.S. because they are starting their healthcare industry transformations with a clean slate. By not being burdened with the complexity of integrating a patchwork quilt of outdated legacy systems and the disparate silos of information locked up in those systems or on paper, they are able to use the most contemporary, and often commoditized technology, on the market. The solutions they implement are not only more robust, but far easier for healthcare providers to use. They also tend to be much less costly.

I wouldn't proclaim that the solution to our healthcare IT woes in the U.S. is to abdicate to the government even though there is something to be said for centralized planning, command, and control as observed in other countries. Perhaps, however, there is another very powerful force for solving these problems that is a better fit with our American culture and way of life; Employers. If you read the Wall Street Journal yesterday, you no doubt saw the article proclaiming an initiative by several of America's largest corporations to "provide digital health records to their employees and to store them in a multimillion-dollar-data warehouse linking hospitals, doctors and pharmacies. Their goal: to cut costs by having consumers coordinate their own health care among doctors and hospitals." If we are ever going to reach President Bush's 2004 State of the Union promise of an electronic health record for most Americans within 10 years (now 8 years), this may be the way we get there.

This certainly isn't the first time that major employers have banded together and flexed their muscles to stimulate needed changes in the healthcare industry. The Leapfrog Group has been an effective change agent for hospital quality around a defined set of diseases and treatments. Hospitals had little choice but to tow- the-line when major employers and payors in their markets sounded off. I have no doubt that this newest initiative by employers to stimulate EHR/PHR adoption will help move things along in the United States. I would, however, urge these major employers to make every effort to work closely with organized medicine and care providers in planning and implementing these systems and services so they work equally well and provide an investment return for everyone in the healthcare ecosystem; patients, providers, family members, employees, and employers.

Next week I'll be attending the Health Industry Leaders Forum in Barcelona, Spain, where I'll have an opportunity to deliver an address and get an update on some of the most contemporary healthcare information technology projects in the region. I'll provide a summary in my next Blog post.

Bill Crounse, MD Healthcare Industry Director Microsoft Corporation