Handheld Computers in Health Care: Pros and Cons - Essay Sample

Introduction

The application of the computers that are handheld has been swiftly increasing in an array of settings for health care from the 1990s. Usually, these computers are highly portable, lightweight and inexpensive, but yet, there are some drawbacks, such as an inconvenience in the pen-based input, less processing power, limited connection to the network and small screen. According to a particular qualitative research exploring clinician's non-usage trend of personal digital assistant (PDA)s, barriers of usability such as additional requirements for accessories, perceived device delicacy, short life of battery, mechanism of data entry, recognition problems in handwriting and screen size, are some of the major barriers that discourage physicians' use (Nagle, 2009). This research evaluates the usability of a support system for decision making, a prototype PDA-based system for obesity management by usability testing involving end-users before it is implemented in the medical settings.

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The system is designed to integrate functions of decision support for the management and screening of Obesity into the present log system for clinical purposes. Nurses undergoing training enter de-identified data from the encounters of their patients in the log system as a routine. The PDA-based decision support system uses a set of CPG-based decision documentation and rules templates which alert nurses to do obesity screening, aid in the process of screening inclusive of calculation of BMI, generate an obesity-based diagnosis automatically, and expediate documentation of a proof-based plan for Obesity.

This expressive research utilizes think -aloud and observational techniques to handle the study question: what problems of usability are alleged by end-users? Just five of the recent nursing graduates participate. The for inclusion is nursing graduates who have accomplished the requirements for graduation of Nursing's program. Exclusion criterion is not involved. The usability test takes place in a Nursing usability laboratory (Nam-Ju, 2017). The prototype is uploaded on a Tungsten E2, a PDA that most nurses have utilized to upload their clinical log information during their nursing training. The test adopted will perform for the drug dosage application for managing Obesity of the patients.

These participants are given the scenarios for the evaluation of the application. The tasks and scenarios reflect the performance of the application, which is then verified by the selected informaticist in research. Participants are urged to think aloud when completing the tasks of study. Their verbalizations are documented by Morae usability software that also captures task times. When a participant is quiet for a considerably long time, he or she is reminded by the researcher to think out loud. If a user recognizes issues or even the researcher finds incidents that are critical and are characterized by the looks of bewilderment, silence, comments etc., he records elaborating the activities of that person to provide extra feedback which may help to highpoint problems which otherwise could not be recognized. After the task is completed by the participants, they are requested to finish a short survey which includes questions on their computer experience and their demographics and also open questions concerning the system, comprising of negative characteristics, positive characteristics, recommendations, and problems (Nam-Ju, 2017).

The analysis of data is grounded on the information acquired by the Morae software, survey of end-user, notes, and the transcriptions. The mean time for performance of task is calculated. The investigator looks for acute incidents, that are characterized by repetitive actions, silence, comments, etc., and assess the incidents keenly and deeply by the help of the Morae software. These incidents recorded and the written comments of users are put into a summary, then content analysis, a procedure for making valid and replicable inferences from information and data, is done. The comments are then classified according to recommendations, negative characteristics, and positive characteristics. Level of computer experience, time for task performance and demographics of the user, are analyzed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS); deviations, means, percentages, and frequencies are calculated (Nam-Ju, 2017).

Through the end-user usability testing, issues of usability which are unidentified by the usability experts and developers are identified by nurses who have practiced in this system. Deliberating that the narrow research concerning the usability evaluation of handheld computer in contrary to the current increase in the use of these device-based applications, the methods of usability engineering borrowed in evaluating and developing the PDA-based decision support system for the obesity management would offer a precedent for extra research and study on design, evaluation, and implementation of systems of health information using handheld devices.

References

Nagle, L. M., Hardiker, N., Mastrian, K., & McGonigle, I. (2009). Information and knowledge needs of nurses in the 21st century. Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge, 133-146. Retrieved from https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781284063691/cfi/6/42!/4/138/2@0:0

Nam-Ju, L., & Suzanne, B. (2017). Usability Testing of a Prototype Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)-based Decision Support System for the management of Obesity. Semantic Scholar. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/df93/6a14fe020f7fc092abee62ecbb662ca4e373.pdf