How electronic communication is changing health care: Usability is main barrier to effective electronic information systems

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7455.1564

BMJ 2004;328:1564 (26 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7455.1564

Letter

How electronic communication is changing health care

Usability is main barrier to effective electronic information systems

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Jadad and Delamothe celebrate "the return of thehuman" to health informatics in their editorial asking what'snext for electronic communication and health care.¹ The questionis not whether we need to merge human centred and technologycentred approaches: the question is how to do it.

If electronic resources are to improve health they have to beaccessible, reliable, and usable. More than 80% of websitesare currently not accessible by all, including most primarycare trust and healthcare charity sites.² And according to ourunpublished in-house survey, few electronic resources are subjectto the rigour we would expect of reliable, evidence based publications,and many of the high quality resources that exist are prohibitivelydifficult to use in everyday practice.

Usability concerns whether an information system is structuredso that users can get an answer to fit their purpose. The solutionto this problem is user centred . . . [Full text of this article]

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Douglas Badenoch, director

Minervation, Oxford Business Park North, Oxford OX4 2JZ douglas.badenoch@minervation.com

Andre Tomlin, director

Minervation, Oxford Business Park North, Oxford OX4 2JZ

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