2021 Research Stories
Choosing What Clinicians See in an Electronic Health Record Can Reduce Cognitive Burden and Improve Decision Making
Giving clinicians the ability to customize the patient electronic health record display reduces cognitive burden, saves time, and supports decision making in busy clinical environments.
Designing Digital Healthcare Technology to Support Cognitive Team Work in Pediatric Trauma Settings
Simple and informative graphic displays in emergency department trauma bays can streamline and expedite information sharing across caregiver roles to improve patient care and safety.
Improving Electronic Health Record Usability for Patient Safety
Analysis of patient safety event reports showed an association between electronic health record (EHR) usability and patient safety in both adults and children and led to development of an EHR assessment tool that healthcare facilities can use to identify usability and safety issues.
Patient-Facing Clinical Decision Support to Improve Blood Pressure
Translating hypertension guidelines into a patient-facing clinical decision support tool can engage patients in blood pressure management.
Visual Learning: Displaying the Data for Hypertension Management
A clinical decision support tool helps patients and physicians use at-home measured blood pressure data to better understand hypertension control and inform shared treatment decisions.
Previous Research Stories
Designing Intelligent Systems to Support Cognitive Work of Clinical Providers in Emergency Departments
The use of cognitive engineering systems methodology helps to better understand the interactions of the cognitive and workflow processes of frontline emergency medicine providers by affording new strategies for the design of health information technology (IT) solutions. These strategies not only strive to improve the effectiveness of clinical work in high-intensity medical environments, but also provide a guide to improve health IT implementations in the future.
Low-Cost Screening in the Emergency Department Helps Address Social Determinants of Health
The use of an emergency department referral infrastructure including an electronic assessment of patients’ social needs (e.g., transportation, food, and housing assistance) can facilitate referrals for those in need and monitor population health post-discharge, which shows the potential of such infrastructure to improve health outcomes and reduce inappropriate emergency department usage.
User-Centered Decision Support Tools for Chronic Pain
By characterizing common patterns in information availability, information use, and care planning by primary care providers during patient visits for chronic pain, researchers created new electronic health record-based decision support tools to guide clinicians’ perceptions and judgments of noncancer pain to increase use of guideline-based patient assessment and treatment.
Using Aviation Technology to Prevent Healthcare Errors: The Health IT Black Box
Similar to the airline industry’s use of a “black box” that captures actions leading up to a near miss or error, the health IT black box captures mouse movements and keystrokes made by users of EHRs. This allows for a robust analysis of the root cause of EHR errors that subsequently can inform improvements in EHR design and usability.