Physicians' perceptions about a semantically integrated display for chart review: A Multi-Specialty survey.

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Clinical Decision Support

Background:

• Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are crucial for patient care but often present navigation challenges.
• Physician workflow can be disrupted by fragmented information and the need to switch between multiple EHR functionalities.
• Optimizing EHR interfaces is essential for efficient data review and clinical decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate physician perceptions of an integrated patient summary display designed to represent care context.
• To identify challenges and gather suggestions for improving EHR navigation based on physician feedback.

Main Methods:

• Iterative design of a conceptual integrated patient summary prototype.
• Online survey administered to a multi-specialty panel of outpatient physicians.
• Utilized a 7-point Likert scale for usefulness ratings and thematic analysis for open-ended comments on EHR navigation.

Main Results:

• Forty-nine physicians completed the survey, rating the integrated display's usefulness as slightly positive.
• Respondents did not find the prototype confusing.
• Key challenges included navigating multiple EHR functions and manual data searching; suggestions focused on data integration and visualization.

Conclusions:

• The integrated display showed slightly positive usefulness, offering insights for EHR navigation enhancement.
• Facilitating data integration across the EHR record can simplify data retrieval and synthesis, improving navigation efficiency.