Summary
Objectives Clinical information system (CIS) developers and implementers have begun to look
to other scientific disciplines for new methods, tools, and techniques to help them
better understand clinicians and their organizational structures, clinical work environments,
capabilities of clinical information and communications technology, and the way these
structures and processes interact. The goal of this article is to help CIS researchers,
developers, implementers, and evaluators better understand the methods, tools, techniques,
and literature of the field of human factors.
Methods We developed a framework that explains how six key human factors topics relate to
the design, implementation, and evaluation of CISs.
Results Using this framework we discuss the following six topics: 1) informatics and patient
safety; 2) user interface design and evaluation; 3) workflow and task analysis; 4)
clinical decision making and decision support; 5) distributed cognition; and 6) mental
workload and situation awareness.
Conclusions Integrating the methods, tools, and lessons learned from each of these six areas
of human factors research early in CIS design and incorporating them iteratively during
development can improve user performance, user satisfaction, and integration into
clinical workflow. Ultimately, this approach will improve clinical information systems
and healthcare delivery.
Keywords
Human factors - clinical information systems - computerized medical record - human
information processing - clinical decision support systems
