NIST project to evaluate health IT ease-of-use

The Commerce Department's National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) said it wants to develop standards to help evaluate the ease-of-use of health IT systems.

In a notice on a federal contracting web site, NIST announced it was looking for companies that could create a "usability framework" for health IT systems. The job would require , "development, refinement and harmonization of HIT usability standards and certification processes." Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, NIST was given a role to help the Office of the National Coordinator build a testing infrastructure for EHR systems to ensure interoperability and security. The institute might also be given a role in the certification of such systems. Among the services sought in the contract, NIST wants a firm that can delve into "human factors analysis" and "cognitive task analysis," ways of analyzing how people react to software instructions.