OK – so “certify” may be too strong a test. But one can argue over the operational definition of “certify”. One *can* validate that something is usable to criterion measures. It is common practice outside of health IT. Using the term “user-friendly” shows a lack of understanding or appreciation for the field. There are objective standards.

Just because one doctor might like the entries in ALL CAPS ignores the fact that ALL CAPS slows reading times and increases errors. There is a body of knowledge (read Chris Wickens’ book “Engineering Psychology and Human Performance” for instance) to get serious treatments of the science, psychology, and engineering around how one can validate and improve human performance with systems.

You should thank a psychologist everytime you fly in a plane or get power from a nuclear power plant, for were it not for the field of ‘human factors psychology’ the world would be a much more dangerous place.

Furthermore, the FDA is now endorsing a usability methodology to, in effect, certify that medical devices are usable.

Health IT needs to get on board.

Please

As for Blumenthal’s article in NEJM, he actually says quite a number of good things which I fully support. And yes, one may see, as you have, that Blumenthal’s comments were reflective of nudging all those HIT vendors to start producing better apps. My concern though is that in making such a statement, is he also stating that there needs to be a process to assess usability? This would be a disaster as it is both unworkable and would kill innovation.

I do think you missed some of what Blumenthal said about certified EHR. Seemed to me like he took a nice swipe at CCHIT certification basically saying that it’s not good enough since too many CCHIT certified EHR aren’t usable. That he can see this is a good thing in my book.