Although automated patient records (APRs) have been the focus of much recent research and a number of commercial systems have been developed, they have met resistance from the clinician user community because key end-user issues have not been addressed. This research program is developing a novel, end-user-oriented interface to the emerging APR technol y. The Phase I research applied cognitive and ethnographic methods to analyze clinician needs for interacting with patient records. The end-user needs identified led to a design of an APR Interface Layer (APRIL) with multiple 'views' of the patient record, each executed on a different computational host (a pen-based clinical encounter view, which provides flexible, mobile forms-based interaction during patient encounters; and a desktop data view for record review/analysis in the clinician's office). APRIL is designed as an open systems architecture for linking the interface to any of a variety of automated patient record databases. The overall aim of the Phase II research is to construct, test, and demonstrate a full-scale prototype of the key components of APRIL, based on the Phase I analysis, architecture and preliminary design.
The research will produce a novel human- computer interface for Automated Patient Records (APR), an extremely active commercial area. Implemented in Phase II in open systems technology using X-Windows software, the APR interface has strong commercial application. It can be integrated with any or several of current or emerging commercial APR systems, sold separately as a value- added interface layer for APR access, or used as the basis for development of a novel APR system.
