Designing a useful and usable mobile EMR application through a participatory design methodology - a case study

An electronic medical record (EMR) supports the general practitioner (GP) in decision-making. In this paper, we report on our study, in which we analyze and identify user requirements for a mobile EMR application. By relying on a participatory design approach [1], we were able to identify the most relevant patient data for house visits by a GP. Our findings further refine earlier results from similar research [2], [3] by narrowing down the most important information for Belgian GPs that should be visible immediately. We also identify five core considerations for the use of a mobile EMR application during a house visit. These five considerations are translated into five requirements: exploiting mobile affordances, immediate availability, quick overview of most relevant data, easy entry of new patient data and the importance of e-prescriptions. We iteratively designed the user interface for a mobile application that meets these requirements. Thus, by taking advantage of the affordances of a mobile device, including context sensing, we optimized the way a GP can use a mobile EMR application.status: publishe