Healthcare Scenario

Hospitals are complex, yet highly structured environment where electronic information collection, processing, and delivery plays a central role in virtually all activities. While the introduction of electronic records has improved quality and enabled more efficient information exchange between institutions, it has in many ways actually complicated the work of the hospital personnel. The studies performed in the Steyr Hospital by the Healthcare UCD team (reported on in previous deliverables) had found out the following:
The core of the problem lies in the fact that complex interaction with a computer system is not possible during most medical procedures. Clearly it is hard to image a doctor dealing with a notebook or a PDA during surgery. However even during simpler procedures access to computers is problematic. This is due to several factors. For one, examinations are often performed on thigh schedules with doctors having just a couple of minutes per patient. Quoting one of the interviewed doctors they want: ’time for the patient, not time for the notebook’. Second, the patients expect doctors to devote their full attention to their problems. Retaining the ’human touch’ and showing concern were major issues voiced by doctors interviewed in our work. Thus doctors are reluctant to interrupt the examination and focus on a computer instead of the patient; even it is only for a very short time. Finally examinations require hands to be sterile.
This means that hand based I/O (mouse, keyboard, touch screen etc.) is not feasible in between examination steps. As a consequence of the above issues electronic information access is severely restricted during dealing with patients. Patient data is often simply printed out before a procedure and taken along in paper form. Information is also rarely entered directly into the system. Instead it is entered into dictating machines, written on paper by accompanying nurses, or even stored as ’mental notes’.