Linking IT, outcomes and usability

Just days before Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, assumes her new post as national coordinator of health IT, acting coordinator Jacob Reider, MD, published thoughts about improving health IT usability on the agency’s Health IT Buzz blog.

The usability challenges he faced as a practicing physician more than 10 years ago "remain unresolved," he wrote. "This is a problem."

While early adopters of technology are well known to tolerate imperfections, Reider pointed out that health IT differs from consumer electronics. The user isn’t always the buyer. Multi-year contracts and technical “lock-in” cause portability to be a true challenge. "Buying an EHR is more like buying an airplane than a clock radio." Legacy software in a high-risk environment will evolve slowly. 

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has been working toward "more consistently incorporating usability into the bullet list of expectations" for health IT. That includes holding usability conferences, hosting hearings on EHR usability, commissioning the Institute of Medicine's report on health IT and patient safety and developing other resources.

Reider wrote that ONC is trying to understand the issues and "define an appropriate balance for the government’s role in helping evolve health IT toward better efficiency and safety through enhanced usability."

Also in the news are more and more reports about studies that prove the link between various health IT and improved patient outcomes. For example, patients with diabetes who regularly refilled their prescriptions using Kaiser Permanente’s patient portal improved their medication adherence and lowered their cholesterol levels, according to a study published in Medical Care.

All patients in the study had been prescribed cholesterol-lowering medications. Researchers found that medication non-adherence and poorly controlled cholesterol decreased by 6 percent among patients using the portal compared to occasional or non-users.

Incrementally, the benefits we’ve been hearing about for so long are coming to pass. Is your organization experiencing improved patient care as a result of health IT? Please share your experience.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor