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Highlights:UPA-DC’s second annual observance of World Usability Day includes a poster session, light refreshments, and a panel of experts discussing usability in healthcare. And the price? Free! A thank you for the community’s generous support at last month’s conference. This event is cosponsored with STC-DC (Society for Technical Communication, Washington, DC chapter). If you would like to help publicize this event, you can download and display either or both posters: Date and time:November 14, 2006 (Tuesday) Location: NRECA Conference Center Parking Information:Parking is available in the NRECA building from the Taylor Street ramp. Rates start at $3.00 per hour, with a maximum of $7.00 per day. Two shuttle elevators operate from each garage level to the Plaza Lobby. There is a sign above the garage saying that the garage closes early to discourage people from parking there and going to restaurants. Please disregard the sign for this event. NRECA has confirmed that we can park in the garage. In addition, there are several parking garages in the Ballston area. Description:“Live long and be healthy” we say to each other. And yet the American healthcare system — that complex of people, procedures, systems, and products — is increasingly strained by rising costs, an aging population, and pressure to adopt new technologies. At the same time, patients and their families have ever-more access to health information, and many want healthcare to become more patient-centered. New technologies offer promise, but they must be appropriately designed for the medical professionals and patients who use them. As usability professionals, we are used to applying our design expertise to web sites and software applications. But these same principles can — and should — be applied to healthcare products and systems. In fact, one can argue that user-centered design is critical to the products, systems, and procedures in healthcare. Consider:
The usability profession has established techniques for user research, clear writing, intuitive interface design, and usability evaluation. These practices can be applied in many ways:
This year, UPA-DC’s observance of World Usability Day will show the public and healthcare practitioners how user-centered design can improve all parts of our country’s multi-faceted healthcare system. Registration:Advance registration is recommended. Use our online registration form. Registration closes at noon on the day of the program. Cost:Free! We are grateful for the generous support that you, members of the DC Metro usability community, showed at last month’s conference. UPA-DC is returning the favor by making this event free. Our panelists:
About the panelists:Benjamin Chesluk is a Senior Research Associate at Design Science, a consultancy located in Philadelphia PA. He leads ethnographic research projects dedicated to helping manufacturers develop better, more usable products. Mr. Chesluk received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He also received postdoctoral training at the interdisciplinary Behavioral Science Training program of the National Development and Research Institute. Peter L. Elkin, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, also directs a laboratory in biomedical informatics at Mayo. Working in biomedical informatics since 1981, Dr. Elkin’s areas of interest include controlled health vocabularies, information retrieval, human factors engineering, clinical decision support systems, electronic medical records, standards in medical nomenclature, voice recognition technology, and the application of voice technology to medicine. He currently chairs three standards committees: American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) E31.01, which defines controlled health vocabularies; ASTM E31.29, which develops national standards for bioinformatics; and OASIS International Healthcare Continuum (IHC), which creates and promotes standards for global health information. Dr. Elkin is the principal author of the ANSI standard on quality indicators for controlled health vocabularies, which has also been approved by the Organization for International Standards (ISO) as a technical specification. He is the principal author on the draft ISO technical specification on health indicators. Dr. Elkin received his Bachelor of Science from Union College and his M.D. from New York Medical College. He served his residency in Internal Medicine at the Lahey Clinic and was awarded a fellowship in medical informatics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). Martha Gaie is a postdoctoral fellow in consumer health informatics at the National Library of Medicine. Her current research includes development of a model of Internet information seeking and a usability study of NLM’s Genetics Home Reference. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a B.A. in journalism (1988), B.S. in nursing (1995), M.S. in life sciences communication (1998), and Ph.D. in mass communications (2004), with minors in marketing and prevention & intervention science. She previously completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer communication research at University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research, internships with Senator William Proxmire (1988) and the Journal of the American Medical Association (1996), and the American Society for Microbiology’s Student Science Journalism Program in Washington, D.C. (1996). From 1998 to 2001, she served on the Institutional Review Board for UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. In 2001, she attended Shared Decision-Making Summer School at Oxford University’s St. Catherine’s College. Her research interests include Internet health information seeking and message processing, health promotion/disease prevention, shared decision-making in health care, science literacy, qualitative research methods, and research ethics.. Sandra W. Hilfiker is a public health advisor in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In that capacity she leads outreach efforts for healthfinder.gov, a key Web resource for finding reliable government and nonprofit health information. She contributes to department-wide efforts to coordinate and implement the Healthy People 2010 Health Communication Objectives. Ms. Hilfiker currently oversees several research projects. One is developing health content appropriate for low-literacy audiences. Another is developing evidence-based strategies for disseminating this content through multiple communication channels. Throughout her career, she has coordinated a number of health communication activities for federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and Administration for Children and Families. Ms. Hilfiker earned a B.A. in Communication from the University of Kentucky and an M.A. in Communication with an emphasis in health and social marketing from the University of Georgia. Ron Kaye is a human factors specialist with the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). Through the efforts of Mr. Kaye and his colleagues in the Human Factors group, medical equipment is made more safe and effective. The group promotes sound usability principles and practices during new product design, development, and evaluation. It also evaluates medical devices currently in use to detect and resolve use-related problems. Mr. Kaye has worked in applied psychology and human factors for 22 years. Prior to coming to the FDA, he worked with nuclear and fossil power plant control rooms, military weapons and communications systems, aircraft cockpit and air traffic control instrumentation, and medical devices. Mr. Kaye has a B.S. in general biology and an M.S. in applied psychology. James Walker is an internationally recognized lecturer, consultant, and thought leader in electronic healthcare record (EHR) development and usability. He is presently the Chief Healthcare Information Officer of the Geisinger Health System in central Pennsylvania, where he leads development of integrated outpatient, inpatient, and patient EHRs. With Pascale Carayon of the University of Wisconsin, he leads a $1.5 million study of the usability and effectiveness of order entry in ICUs. With Frank Richards, he leads a $1.5 million grant to create a regional healthcare-information network for 40 counties in rural Pennsylvania. He practices internal medicine and has published numerous journal articles and a widely-used book, Implementing an Electronic Health Record System, in Springer-Verlag's Health Informatics Series. Dr. Walker is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. He serves on several boards, workgroups and committees sponsored by the American College of Physicians, the National Library of Medicine, the Markle Foundation, and the Pennsylvania eHealth Initiative. He has provided briefings to the National Health Policy Forum, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, MedPAC, and Pennsylvania House and Senate committees. Dr. Walker earned his M.D at the University of Pennsylvania before training in internal medicine at Penn State University. He completed a National Library of Medicine fellowship in medical informatics. Code of professional ethics:UPA-DC maintains a code of professional ethics to encourage the free expression of ideas and assure the security of our members and guests. We reserve the right to exclude or remove any individual and to limit meeting attendance if necessary. |