Supporting Work Activities in Healthcare by Mobile Electronic Patient Records

Abstract. Supporting work activities in healthcare is highly complex and chal-lenging. This paper outlines the findings from a usability study of a commercial PC based electronic patient record (EPR) system at a large Danish hospital and presents our experiences with the design of a mobile counterpart. First, a num-ber of challenges in relation to the use of traditional desktop-based EPR sys-tems in healthcare were identified. Secondly, a mobile context-aware prototype was designed and implemented, which automatically keeps track of contextual factors such as the physical location of patients and staff, upcoming appoint-ments etc. The usability of the mobile EPR prototype was evaluated in a labora-tory as well as in relation to carrying out real work activities at the hospital. Our results indicate that mobile EPR systems can support work activities in healthcare, but that interaction design of such systems must be carefully thought out and evaluated. Specifically, our findings challenge the view of con-text-awareness being a universally useful paradigm for mobile HCI.