Usability, Patient Safety and EHR's

Increasingly, modern US healthcare is being delivered with health information technology (HIT). When properly designed, implemented, and used, health information technology can improve patient safety, care quality, and costs. With increased adoption of health IT, however, concerns arise with the associated occurrences of unintended consequences, or untoward outcomes such as medical errors and adverse events. This session will provide an over view of AMIA’s recommendations and suggest a way forward to improve the usability and effective use of health IT, and the quality and safety of patient care. These recommendations focus on best practices for usability and human factors considerations in the design and implementation of health information technology.

Learning Objectives

During this webinar, participants will learn about:

• Concerns associated with occurrences of unintended consequences, or untoward outcomes such as medical errors and adverse events
• Ways to improve the usability and effective use of health IT, and the quality and safety of patient care.
• Best practices for usability and human factors considerations in the design and implementation of health information technology recommendations

Speakers Information

Blackford Middleton is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, and Chief Informatics Officer, and is a Professor of Biomedical Informatics, and of Medicine (with tenure) at Vanderbilt University. In his roles at Vanderbilt, he provides oversight and guidance for the groups responsible for developing enterprise clinical informatics strategy and infrastructure development, software product design for enterprise clinical applications, enterprise clinical decision support, nursing informatics tools, and conducts clinical informatics research.

Currently, Dr. Middleton is a member of the Board of Directors at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA, and is Chair-elect), and serves on the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Aligning Forces for Quality program (Dr. Mark McClellan, Chair). He is past Treasurer of the American Telemedicine Association, and the American College of Medical Informatics, and past Chairman of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI, 2000), and past Chairman of the Healthcare Information Management & Systems Society (HIMSS, 2005).

Dr. Middleton studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received a Masters in Public Health degree from the Yale University School of Public Health with a dual concentration in Epidemiology, and Health Services Administration. He received an MD from SUNY Buffalo, and was a resident in internal medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Sciences Center. He completed an AHCPR Fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Stanford University, where he received his Master of Science degree in Health Services Research, focusing on clinical informatics.