Usability testing of a family medicine information system


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Enformatik Enstitüsü, Bilişim Sistemleri Anabilim Dalı, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2012

Öğrenci: SABA ÖZ

Eş Danışman: MURAT PERİT ÇAKIR, SEVGİ ÖZKAN YILDIRIM

Özet:

Healthcare is an important part of life in most societies that attract a significant amount of public investment. Primary healthcare is a fundamental branch of the healthcare system where patients and doctors initially meet. Family Medicine Information Systems are developed in an effort to ease the daily work of family doctors with the help of information technology. Such systems are generally used for handling critical tasks such as managing health records of patients, monitoring pregnancy and keeping track of children’s vaccination. Like any medical information technology, the usability of such systems is a vital concern for enabling efficient and effective primary healthcare operations. Family Medicine is a recently established practice in Turkey and there are a number of systems in service to aid the daily work of family doctors. However, none of these systems have been subjected to a systematic usability analysis. In this study, a usability analysis of a popular Family Medicine Information System used in Turkey is conducted. By combining several usability evaluation techniques, the study identified several important usability issues and provided recommendations for further improving the system. The main usability issue observed in the system was the overall complexity of the information presented at the main interface that often confused and misled the users. In order to address this problem, it is suggested that features related to the most frequent family medicine operations should be placed on the main screen, whereas remaining features should be organized under auxiliary pages with clear navigation aids.