Computerized Medication Management

Online medication management holds much promise for reducing drug misadministration errors. System safeguards are needed , however, to enable not only error prevention, but also rapid error detection and correction.

One such system is under development as part of a next-generation medical information system used by the U.S. military.

The Approach

Medical display

Perform a cognitive task analysis to thoroughly understand how nurses will use the online medication management system that is part of CHCSII.

Conduct usability testing to evaluate system adequacy for medication orders management in terms of response times, error rates, and user satisfaction.

The Solution

Group discussion

Provide human factors recommendations and specific usability principles for product improvements that will facilitate nurses' use of this emerging technology.

Benefits

Human factors input can

  • reduce user errors
  • increase system reliability
  • shorten design/test cycles