Usability of Three Graphical User Interfaces for Drug Allergy Documentation

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Documentation Improvement
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Current electronic health record drug allergy documentation relies on unstructured free-text.
• This format presents challenges for data retrieval, analysis, and clinical decision support.
• Improving structured data capture for drug allergies is crucial for patient safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate structured, coded drug allergy documentation modules for electronic health records.
• To compare the usability of new structured modules against the existing free-text system.
• To gather user feedback for further refinement of the documentation module.

Main Methods:

• Development of two distinct structured and coded drug allergy documentation module versions.
• Usability testing of the three interfaces (two new, one current) with 25 physicians.
• Evaluation of interface usability using the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire.
• Analysis of user feedback for iterative module improvement.

Main Results:

• Both newly developed structured drug allergy documentation modules demonstrated significantly higher usability scores than the current free-text version.
• Physician feedback indicated areas for enhancement in the structured module design.
• The structured modules offer a more efficient and effective approach to documenting drug allergies.

Conclusions:

• Structured and coded drug allergy documentation modules represent a significant usability improvement over free-text systems in electronic health records.
• User-centered design and iterative feedback are essential for optimizing clinical documentation tools.
• Implementation of structured modules can enhance data quality and support safer patient care.