An online network tool for quality information to answer questions about occupational safety and health: usability and applicability

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Common information facilities do not always provide the quality information needed to answer questions on health or health-related issues, such as Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) matters. Barriers may be the accessibility, quantity and readability of information. Online Question & Answer (Q&A) network tools, which link questioners directly to experts can overcome some of these barriers. When designing and testing online tools, assessing the usability and applicability is essential. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess the usability and applicability of a new online Q&A network tool for answers on OSH questions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We applied a cross-sectional usability test design. Eight occupational health experts and twelve potential questioners from the working population (workers) were purposively selected to include a variety of computer- and internet-experiences. During the test, participants were first observed while executing eight tasks that entailed important features of the tool. In addition, they were interviewed. Through task observations and interviews we assessed applicability, usability (effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction) and facilitators and barriers in use.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most features were usable, though several could be improved. Most tasks were executed effectively. Some tasks, for example searching stored questions in categories, were not executed efficiently and participants were less satisfied with the corresponding features. Participants' recommendations led to improvements. The tool was found mostly applicable for additional information, to observe new OSH trends and to improve contact between OSH experts and workers. Hosting and support by a trustworthy professional organization, effective implementation campaigns, timely answering and anonymity were seen as important use requirements.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This network tool is a promising new strategy for offering company workers high quality information to answer OSH questions. Q&A network tools can be an addition to existing information facilities in the field of OSH, but also to other healthcare fields struggling with how to answer questions from people in practice with high quality information. In the near future, we will focus on the use of the tool and its effects on information and knowledge dissemination.</p

Analyzing Interaction Dynamics at the Fuzzy Front-End of Innovation Projects: A Tool for Prospective Ergonomics

International audienceProspective ergonomics is defined as an emerging mode of ergonomic intervention focused on the anticipation of future user needs and activities for innovation design. This is a fairly new topic of research for ergonomics and implies the development of new methods of intervention, a sustained dialog with other domains such as innovation management, and a better understanding of the activity deployed by design teams at the fuzzy front-end of design projects. In order to address this need, we analyzed verbal communication between members of an ad hoc team whose goal was to structure future projects for the development of systems making use of emerging technologies in the field of bioinformatics, during a KCP workshop for innovation management. Our results show that the activity deployed by this team -- composed of software developers, user representatives and an ergonomist - comprises epistemic and argumentative aspects, just as the subsequent design activity does. We discuss these results in terms of research on prospective ergonomics and on design activities

Assessing the usability of a science gateway for medical knowledge bases with TRENCADIS

Biomedical applications are often built on top of knowledge bases that contain medical images and clinical reports. Currently, these bases are being used to improve diagnosis, research and teaching, but in many cases, the infrastructure required has a prohibitive cost for many medical centres. However, resources can be attached from existing e-Science infrastructures. Therefore, many efforts have been made to establish best practices that allow the use of such infrastructures. However, e-Science relies on open, distributed, collaborative environments, built on top of very specialized technologies, such as Grid and Cloud computing, which require reasonable technical skills for their usage. Therefore, science gateways have become essential tools that assist users in interacting with e-Science applications. This paper describes TRENCADIS, a technology that supports the creation and operation of virtual knowledge bases. To this end, it provides developers with components and APIs for building secure data services that can be annotated and queried through ontology templates, based on DICOM and DICOM-SR. This technology was used in this paper to build a gateway for assisting diagnosis and research in breast cancer. We also present here the results of a study conducted to evaluate the gateway, from the point of view of the usability perceived by a group of physicians and radiologists. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.The authors wish to thank the financial support received from The Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to develop the project "Code-Cloud", with reference TIN2010-17804, and the financial support received from The Vicerectorat d'Investigacio de la Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) to develop the project "Diseno de Componentes Cloud Facilitadores del Despliegue y la Alta Disponibilidad de Servicios TRENCADIS, para compartir Imagenes Medicas DICOM e informes Asociados DICOM-SR", with reference 20111013.Maestre Urbano, CV.; Segrelles Quilis, JD.; Torres Serrano, E.; Blanquer Espert, I.; Medina, R.; Hernández García, V.; Martí, L. (2012). Assessing the usability of a science gateway for medical knowledge bases with TRENCADIS. 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