Design of a Health Issue Focused Patient Overview : A User-centred Approach to Increase Situation Awareness

Abstract: The implementation of electronic patient records has over the years become an international issue, as is the challenge to reduce the number of medical errors. The use of electronic patient records is viewed as a potential means to achieve patient safety and high quality care, but it is not uncomplicated to introduce a new system in healthcare. Implementing IT applications into healthcare appears to be a politically textured process of organizational change; it requires that the users are put in the centre during development if the implementation shall succeed. This Master of Science Thesis is the result of a user-centred study that has been carried out at Cambio Healthcare Systems AB between September 2007 and February 2008. The thesis discusses how a patient overview based on health issues can be designed to give the care improved giver situation awareness. The fundamental idea of the overview is to support cross professional work that follows the patients’ way through the whole healthcare system. User-centred methods were applied to examine the work flows at a geriatric ward, and to design different conceptual design solutions. The thesis shows that it is legible that an overview of the patient’s health issues would be useful in the aim of improving situation awareness. On account of the geriatric ward’s characteristic teamwork it would be of most use to introduce an overview shared by all users. It would facilitate improved ways of communication, and provide the opportunity to create a shared mental model of a patient’s health condition.