PEN-Ivory: the design and evaluation of a pen-based computer system for structured data entry

Area of Science:

• Computer-assisted medicine
• Human-computer interaction
• Medical informatics

Background:

• Electronic health records require efficient data entry methods.
• Patient progress notes are crucial for clinical documentation.
• Current methods for creating progress notes can be time-consuming.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficiency of different user interface designs for PEN-Ivory, a pen-based system for creating patient progress notes.
• To identify optimal user interface characteristics for rapid data entry in a medical context.

Main Methods:

• Development of multiple PEN-Ivory prototypes with varying user interface elements.
• Empirical evaluation of prototypes in a controlled experimental setting.
• Measurement of data entry efficiency for creating patient progress notes.

Main Results:

• The most efficient PEN-Ivory prototype utilized a paging form.
• A fixed palette of modifiers contributed to faster data entry.
• Making all findings from the controlled vocabulary available simultaneously improved efficiency.

Conclusions:

• PEN-Ivory offers a novel approach to structured data entry for clinical notes.
• Specific user interface design choices significantly impact the efficiency of pen-based medical data entry.
• The optimal PEN-Ivory interface design facilitates faster creation of patient progress notes.