Comment

Comment by Peter Jones on December 15, 2009 at 11:14pm

Adam - The book will take a selection of cases across the domains you see in the chapters. I'm not addressing standards as much as I am exemplary total design approaches that other designers can learn from for problem solving in their own settings. I'm taking the "full spectrum" approach in the book because system and interaction designers are often unaware of the problems and deisgn solutions from other domains in healthcare. Now there are a lot of ER studies out there, and i know a few designers that have worked on solutions for ED unit and flow. But if you have a case and examples to learn from, I'd be interested in discussing.

Comment by Adam Lerner on December 13, 2009 at 10:35pm

Will you be digging into the differing needs of specialized clinical settings? I ask as someone who has been designing UIs for Emergency Department-centric (EDIS) systems. I find myself repeatedly surprised by how little information I've been able to find regarding standards for addressing the intense clinical demands specific to an ED setting. A place where, to choose one example, the system users (triage nurses) are expected to enter data on demographics, vitals, and a couple dozen data points of an initial assessment within 3-5 minutes while they may be simultaneously wrestling or cajoling an unresponsive patient.

I would love to learn what you may have discovered through your research.

Comment by Peter Jones on July 7, 2009 at 6:25pm

Thanks for the comment, and i will consider it. The introduction is meant to hold attention, and the story is true. And besides, Canadian healthcare is not a mess in the same way. It is storytelling, not framing.

However, you raise a lot of implications in this short review. Global healthcare, health systems, and non-web (e.g., EMR) technologies are vastly different in other countries. Where should I draw the line? For the most part, I intend to draw on US examples, because the patient journey model I am using will really break down if I stray into too many non-US examples.

And the book is part of the Rosenfeld user experience design series. It is a judgment call - this is their first "vertical" design book. It is not intended to be comprehensive. In order to maintain scope, I have to navigate an understandable boundary. North American is probably the largest scope I could consider.

The risks of my missing something important in other national situations is too high, and the field changes too quickly. I appreciate your review, and I'd be open to other ways to introduce global examples without opening up the scope to the complexity that would entail. If you (or someone) have some other suggestions, let me know. The book is in its infancy and we can change the storytelling. But the core framework is fairly well defined, and yes, I will be developing it further, and hope to test with you all.

Comment by Lynda Chiotti on June 30, 2009 at 10:52am

Just began reading your Introduction chapter and I was struck by the first word: American. A quick glance further indicates your scope goes beyond the U.S., so I respectfully suggest you recast the beginning sentence to de-emphasize the US-centric impression.