AMA and MedStar Health partner to drive improvements in EHR usability

In an effort to promote transparency around how electronic health records (EHRs) are designed and user-tested, and drive improvements in clinician support and patient safety, the American Medical Association (AMA) and MedStar Health's National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare have developed a comparative EHR User-Centered Design Evaluation Framework that shows a lack of focus among regulators and industry on user-centered design and usability testing.

The EHR User-Centered Design Evaluation Framework drills down on the design and testing processes for optimizing usability in 20 common EHR products using information reported by EHR vendors to meet usability certification requirements set by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The framework goes beyond the low gauge set by federal usability certification criteria and evaluates the vendor's compliance with best practices for user-centered design (UCD) processes according to a 15 point scale developed by MedStar's Human Factors Center in collaboration with the AMA.