An Electronic Health Record Interface for Clinician Use in Inpatient Settings During Rounds

Abstract

In inpatient settings, clinicians visit their patients during morning rounds to go over recent results, patient state, and upcoming plans and goals for the patient’s stay in the hospital. Current electronic health record (EHR) systems overburden clinicians with information, making it inconvenient to use the EHR during rounds. This thesis builds on prior research which demonstrated that EHRs fail to provide clinicians with the appropriate level of patient information, do not integrate information, and enforce structured note taking. This thesis, based on a qualitative study conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital led by Shiri Assis-Hassid, presents an EHR interface for rounds that accommodates clinicians’ needs and behaviors while they are in the room with the patient. The final EHR design presented in this thesis differs from existing EHR designs for rounds, because it integrates a natural note taking process with the patient record and gives the clinician access to all relevant patient information from one EHR screen. Future EHR interface designs should consider the cohesion of all patient information when deciding how and when to visualize individual components.