SYSTEMS-LEVEL QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Efficiency of Clinical Decision Support Systems Improves with Experience

# The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Efficiency, or the resources spent while performing a specific task, is widely regarded as one the determinants of usability. In this study, the authors hypothesize that having a group of users perform a similar task over a prolonged period of time will lead to improvements in efficiency of that task. This study was performed in the domain of decision-supported medication reviews. Data was gathered during a randomized controlled trial. Three expert teams consisting of an independent physician and an independent pharmacist con-ducted 150 computerizedmedication reviews on patients in 13 general practices located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Results were analyzed with a linear mixed model. A fixed effects test on the linear mixed model showed a significant difference in the time required to conduct medication reviews over time; F(31.145)=14.043, p<.001. The average time in minutes required to conduct medication reviews up to the first quartile was M=20.42 (SD=9.00), while the time from the third quartile up was M=9.81 (SD=6.13). This leads the authors to conclude that the amount of time users needed to perform similar tasks decreased significantly as they gained experience over time