How Dental Clinicians Review Patient Medical Histories Using a Web-Based Application

Patient medical history is critical for dental clinicians (DCs) to provide high quality clinical care. A web-based application can be used to retrieve patients' medical histories from health information exchanges and electronic medical records and bring up-to-date information to DCs. The objective of this project was to study how DCs review retrieved patients' medical histories using a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) based patient medical summary (PMS) application developed by the research team. Participants were asked to follow a think-aloud protocol to review the medical histories using the PMS application. The recorded interview sessions were annotated and analyzed. Our results revealed the DCs information review path and pattern, and the time spent on different information sections.