Make EHRs More Like Cars, Healthcare CIOs Say

Rather than study electronic health record (EHR) usability in the abstract, "a few high-value use cases, particularly those that have patient safety implications," should be examined, according to recommendations developed by the Health IT Policy Committee's adoption and certification workgroup. Those recommendations--based on a day of hearings held by the workgroup--were outlined in a letter to national health IT coordinator Farzad Mostashari. In the letter, Marc Probst, CIO at Intermountain Healthcare and co-chair of the workgroup, and Larry Wolf, senior consulting application/data architect at Kindred Healthcare and a workgroup member, broke down different facets of usability before suggesting the test-case approach.