The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing a framework to think about the use of EHRs in relation to adverse events and patient safety. Lana Lowry, NIST project lead on usability and human factors for health IT, believes that in addition to a set of technical requirements for functionality, systems need to have the same set of user requirements for how a user performs with the system.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have to be usable and useful by physicians and integrate with hospitals’ or practices’ other systems to benefit providers or else the money spent on them is just wasted.

“We need to look at usability from the provider end user, depending on their size, provider demographic and practice population demographic,” she said, adding that different kinds of specialists will need different capabilities for their EHRs.

We couldn't agree more.... See the full Article @ http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/usability-is-the-future-of-ehrs posted February 11, 2013 by Mary Mosquera.