User-competence and other usability aspects when introducing a patient administrative system: a case study

Abstract

An empirical study of a development project implementing a patient administrative system at a major hospital is reported. An analysis is made of the training given to the end-users and how this was affected by the events in the project. The results show how usability aspects such as user-competence are affected by a number of different factors in the project. The most important of these are deficiencies in the contract between the delivering consultant and the health authority, delays in the delivery of the program and the manual, and a lack of concern in the project for software usability aspects. For example, the contract between the delivering consultant and the health authority did not include any agreement about responsibility for usability aspects, and the delays in the project caused difficulties for user training. The results show a number of deficiencies in the training, for example: very little training material was given to the trainees and the computer exercises were not closely related to the trainees' future work tasks. We believe that future implementations of patient administrative programs will be more successful if the deficiencies found in the project studied are avoided.