HCI Evaluation of Medication Use HITs in Pediatric Care

Georgia Institute Of Technology, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Medication-based errors have become a paramount issue in health care, especially pediatric care. These largely preventable errors result in thousands of deaths, and even more injuries, complications and costs, in the United States each year. As a result, there has been considerable interest in health information technologies (HITs) designed for medication management practices. However, many of these systems have failed in practice, which can be attributed to these systems not being appropriately designed to support users performing their actual work with considerations for their working context of work. These issues represent a primary focus of research in human-computer interaction (HCI), which recognizes the importance of considering all facets of interaction between human users and IT systems. In collaboration with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA), this research aims to examine user-, device- and context-based factors that affect user interaction with traditional and mobile computing technologies while performing medication management tasks in pediatric care. This dissertation research proposes a study that will involve 90 clinical participants in a healthcare setting at CHOA performing fundamental interaction tasks (e.g., text entry, item selection, interacting with controls) of medication management processes (e.g., patient record access, order entry, clinical documentation) using a constructed HIT system. A full factorial design (3x3x2) will be used to explore the impact of changes in IT device platform, user type, and task complexity on measures of task performance and user experience. The results of this study will serve as a foundation of empirical evidence for the judicious design, development and implementation of HITs in large-scale pediatric hospitals, which will help ensure that these systems are usable and effective in practice. This dissertation research fulfills the research objectives and priority population initiatives of AHRQ/DHHS, as this study focuses on improving medical errors/patient safety in pediatric care environments, as well as the TRIPP initiative. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]