Usability evaluation of electronic dental record systems in Sweden : A survey among dentists and dental hygienists

Abstract: Electronic Dental Records (EDR) are an important part of dental care in Sweden. The usability of these records can affect the workflow in dental care organizations. This study aims to measure the System usability scale (SUS) score of EDRs that are used in dental clinics in Sweden. The study will also investigate the relationship between the SUS score of EDRs and participants’ age, gender, interest in technology, number of patients per workday, professional experience, possible special training to use the EDR, and the period of the training. The study will also rank the most common usability problem in EDRs among the seven possible usability problems included in the questionnaire. The study will present how the participants describe experienced usability problems in the EDRs. The quantitative method constitutes the largest part of this study, while the open-ended questions were used to get a deeper knowledge about some of the usability problems. A digital questionnaire was used in this study to gather data from 115 dentists and 77 dental hygienists who work at various dental clinics around Sweden to get a statistical anchored description about the usability of various EDRs. SUS indicates a low usability level in the EDRs included in the study and a significant negative correlation between the frequency of using EDRs and usability. The males showed better experience with the usability of the EDRs compared to females. The highest-ranked usability problem was the need for users to spend a long time to document patient cases. The usability problems were summarized into three categories which are: an inefficient user interface, lack of semantic interoperability, and users relying on paper.