Guest Article: What will make healthcare software usable?  April
13, 2009  Last month I posted several entries about how
difficult most healthcare software is to use – those articles
garnered lots of “yes, you’re right” type of comments along with
a number of emails asking for help on how to improve usability.
Usability describes the "ability to use" something — the goal
for a usable system is to make it easy to use. Given how hard it
is to actually make something easy to use (yes, ironic), I
invited an expert in this field — Paul Nuschke, a usability
specialist at Electronic Ink – to write about what it takes to
make software usable, with emphasis on healthcare IT systems.
Paul went beyond a simple introduction to the field and gives
specific advice to software designers; it’s clear these guys
know what they are doing. If you’re building a new EMR (and hey,
we have billions of dollars to spend now so what are you waiting
for?) please take Paul’s advice:  In a previous post on this
blog, three prototypes comp