USABILITY PROBLEMS IN A HOME TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM

Anders Bruun, Jan Stage

2010

Abstract

Home telemedicine systems have the potential to reduce health care costs and improve the quality of life for many patients, including those suffering from chronic illness. This requires that the systems have functionality that fulfils relevant needs. Yet it also requires that the systems have a high level of usability in order to enable their users to employ the required functionality, especially if the target user group is elderly people. This paper reports from a usability evaluation of a home telemedicine system. Five elderly persons carried out specified tasks with the system, and based on that we identified usability problems with the system. The problems are presented, analysed in relation to 12 different usability themes and related to results from other evaluations of similar systems.

References

  1. Eikerling, H-J., et al., 2009. Ambient Healthcare Systems - Using the Hydra Embedded Middleware for Implementing an Ambient Disease Management System. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Health Informatics. INSTICC Press.
  2. Fensli, R., Boisen, E., 2008. Human Factors Affecting the Patient's Acceptance of Wireless Biomedical Sensors. In Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, International Joint Conference. Springer. INSTICC Press.
  3. Fisk AD, Rogers WA, 2002. Health Care of Older Adults: The Promise of Human Factors Research. In Human factors interventions for the healthcare of older adults. Lawrence Erlbaum.
  4. Ginsburg, G., 2004. Human Factors Engineering:A Tool for Medical Device Evaluation on Hospital Procurement Decision-Making. In Journal of Biomedical Informatics. Elsevier.
  5. Hertzum, M. and Jacobsen, N. E.., 2003 The Evaluator Effect: A Chilling Fact About Usability Evaluation Methods. In International Journal of Human Computer Interaction. Taylor & Francis.
  6. Jaana M., Paré, G., 2006. Home Telemonitoring of Patients with Diabetes: A Systematic Assesment of Observed Effects. In Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. Blackwell Publishing.
  7. Johnson, C. M., et al., 2004. A User-Centered Framework for Redesigning Health Care Interfaces. In Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Elsevier.
  8. Kaufman, D. R., et al., 2003. Usability in the Real World: Assessing Medical Information Technologies in Patient's Homes. In Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Elsevier.
  9. Kjeldskov, J., et al., 2004. Instant Data Analysis: Evaluating Usability in a Day. In Proceedings of NordiCHI 2004. ACM Press.
  10. Kushniruk, A. W., et al., 1996. Cognitive Evaluation of the User Interface and Vocabulary of an Outpatient Information System. In Proceedings of AMIA Annual Fall Symposium.
  11. Kushniruk, A.W., et al., 2005. Technology Induced Error and Usability: The Relationship Between Usability Problems and Prescription Errors When Using a Handheld Application. In International Journal of Medical Informatics, Elsevier.
  12. Kushniruk, A.W., Patel, V. L., 2004. Cognitive and Usability Engineering Methods for the Evaluation of Clinical Information Systems. In International Journal of Medical Informatics, Elsevier.
  13. Linder, J. A., et al., 2006. Decision support for acute problems: The role of the standardized patient in usability testing. In Journal of Biomedical Informatics. Elsevier.
  14. Molich, R., 2000. User-Friendly Web Design (in Danish), Ingeniøren Books. Copenhagen.
  15. Nielsen, C. M., et al., 2006. It's Worth the Hassle! The Added Value of Evaluating the Usability of Mobile Systems in the Field. In Proceedings of NordiCHI. ACM Press.
  16. Nielsen, J., 1993. Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann. San Diego.
  17. Nielsen, J. and Landauer, TK, 1993. A mathematical model of the finding of usability problems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM Press.
  18. Pascual, J., et al., 2008. Intelligent System for Assisting Elderly People at Home. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Health Informatics. INSTICC press.
  19. Peleg, M., et al., 2009. Using Multi-Perspective Methodologies to Study Users' Interactions with the Prototype Front End of a Guideline-Based Decision Support System for Diabetic Foot Care. In International Journal of Medical Informatics, Elsevier.
  20. Peute, L.W., Jaspers, M.W., 2007. The significance of a usability evaluation of an emerging laboratory order entry system. In International Journal of Medical Informatics, Elsevier.
  21. Rubin, J., 1994. Handbook of Usability Testing, John Wiley & Sons. New York.
  22. Taleb, T., et al., 2009. ANGELAH: A Framework for Assisting Elders at Home. In IEEE journal on selected areas in communications. IEEE.
  23. Sasaki, J., et al., 2009. Experiments of Life Monitoring Systems for Elderly People Living in Rural Areas. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Health Informatics. INSTICC Press.
  24. Sashima, A., et al., 2008. Toward Mobile Healthcare Services by Using Everyday Mobile Phones. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Health Informatics. INSTICC Press.
  25. Souidene W., et al., 2009. Multi-Modal Platform for InHome Healthcare Monitoring (EMUTEM). In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Health Informatics. INSTICC Press.
  26. United Nations, 2006. World Population Prospects.
  27. Dept of Economic and Social Affairs. Obtained at: http://www.un.org/-esa/population/publications/- wpp2006/-WPP2006_Higlights_rev.pdf (downloaded august 20, 2009).
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Bruun A. and Stage J. (2010). USABILITY PROBLEMS IN A HOME TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM . In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Informatics - Volume 1: HEALTHINF, (BIOSTEC 2010) ISBN 978-989-674-016-0, pages 302-309. DOI: 10.5220/0002744603020309


in Bibtex Style

@conference{healthinf10,
author={Anders Bruun and Jan Stage},
title={USABILITY PROBLEMS IN A HOME TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Informatics - Volume 1: HEALTHINF, (BIOSTEC 2010)},
year={2010},
pages={302-309},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002744603020309},
isbn={978-989-674-016-0},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Informatics - Volume 1: HEALTHINF, (BIOSTEC 2010)
TI - USABILITY PROBLEMS IN A HOME TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM
SN - 978-989-674-016-0
AU - Bruun A.
AU - Stage J.
PY - 2010
SP - 302
EP - 309
DO - 10.5220/0002744603020309