Development and Usability Assessments of a Patient Medical Summary Application for Dental Clinicians

Accessing up-to-date patient medial information is essential for dental clinicians (DCs) to provide high quality clinical care. The objectives of this study were to develop a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) based patient medical summary (PMS) application to retrieve information from HIEs and to assess the usability of the PMS application. We followed the user-centred design method which included multiple iterations of developments and usability assessments. Forty-eight of the 50 participants were able to complete reviewing 6 patients’ medical histories during the interview, while the other two completed 5. The system usability scale (SUS) score for the first round was 82±12; while it was 76±16 for the second round of assessment. The lower SUS score in the second round reflected a major change in the study participant population. Even though the SUS score dropped, we noticed that the revisions corresponding to the improvements identified in the first iteration received very positive feedback. User-centred design and usability assessment can help to develop applications which have better information organization and display, and easy for clinicians to interact during decision-making. The PMS application was well received by the DCs and can be a valid option for DCs to access patient medical history.