Digital Healthcare: Moving beyond the data input/out problem toward enhancing clinical judgment

Abstract

The design of digital information management systems for healthcare presents developers with several formidable engineering challenges. These systems must manage huge amounts of data and support communications across disparate platforms and divisions within a healthcare organization. They must ensure that data is kept private, secure, and available to the right people at the right time. However, as shown in other complex systems (e.g., nuclear power), simply making data available may be insufficient. The goals in designing digital healthcare as a ‘cognitive system’ are to present patient information in more meaningful ways, to help healthcare professionals become more productive, and to support healthcare professionals with clinical decision making. This paper describes how principles of cognitive systems engineering (CSE) and user experience (UX) design were applied to Cardiac Consultant, an interactive cardiovascular risk calculator, with those goals in mind.