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Interface Design for Health Care Environments: The Role of Cognitive Science

This is a review of Interface Design for Health Care Environments: The Role of Cognitive Science by V. L. Patel and A. W. Kushniruk.

Introduction

The article delves into the unique challenges faced by both humans and computers in designing information systems and interfaces for healthcare. There are a myriad of issues evident, which most notably are in reasoning, decision-making process, and the sub-par design processes and features that fails to address the cognitive needs of users of these systems. The article emphasizes a key aspect of cognitive usability engineering and provides “fixes” and solutions to address these deficiencies.

Usability Engineering

Usability engineering addresses features that will incorporate:

• The ability to accomplish tasks in a safe, effective and hassle free manner,
• The ability to evaluate interfaces and systems while providing feedback,
• And the ability to be interactive while engaging the cognitive processes of end users.

Summary and Conclusion

The design of any healthcare interface should not be viewed as any design that goes into any application; designing healthcare interfaces involves system design and development methodologies and thorough testing of such interfaces that are backed by scientific principles but also appeals to an end users learning and cognitive capabilities.

Comments

The role cognition and cognitive science plays in user interfaces and information system for health care is important. While the changing nature of technology, it is necessary that healthcare interfaces are designed with features that encourage end-users to provide evaluation and feedback; and as such enables ease of navigating, understanding and sharing healthcare knowledge within and across systems and multiple healthcare domains.