Summary
Introduction
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Frustrations are often expressed around the difficulty of using digital systems in healthcare, compared to say other commercial products made by companies such as Apple or Google.
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The abstract notion of perfect usability being an absolute requirement lessens the value of incremental progress and sets such an unachievable goal that there is a risk of devaluing any improvements made along the way…these are some thoughts which I hope helps to explain my view and and offer something more constructive in the debate.
Issues
- Issue 1: Healthcare is delivered in a complex adaptive system
- Issue 2: Expert staff need autonomy (and patients need them to have it)
- Issue 3: Not every Apple / Google product is perfect
- Issue 4: Apple still offers training
Opportunities
- Opportunity 1: Correlation is not causation and usability is not just simplicity
- Opportunity 2: Beware the Merchants of Complexity
- Opportunity 3: Spend more time on user testing
- Opportunity 4: Liberate data and users from monolithic solutions
