Development and usability testing of Riyadh Mother and Baby Multi-center cohort study registry

A medical registry is a software application that gather and keep clinical and non-clinical data to serve as recording tool for a specific disease longitudinally. In this study, Riyadh Mother and Baby Multicenter was designed as longitudinal study to understand the effect of non-communicable disease on mothers and their babies. A registry was built for the study; to improve data collection process thus enhance the data analysis and to enhance quality of healthcare provided by timely improvement of the services. The objective of this study is to test the usability of the cohort registry developed for clinical research and service improvement.

Think aloud method, a qualitative approach was employed to elicit behaviors of participants while interacting with the registry interface prototype while the focus group session was conducted in order to understand the participants' insights and how participants reach consensus on the functionality and user interface design. Both deductive and inductive thematic analysis were performed on the qualitative data. After two iterative design cycles, improvements were made to the registry prototype.

The registry was found to be efficient, easy to learn, satisfactory, and easy to remember, and resulted in fewer errors. Major design features such as font size and colors were improved based on participants' feedback. In addition to the tested attributes, additional themes of design and benefits were found inductively.

Usability testing of the cohort registry showed that the system was easy to use due to its simple and custom- made design. Improvements of the registry based on the participants' feedback helped in enhancing its usability attributes.