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Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge

BACKGROUND: Healthcare work is, to a considerable extent, cognitive. Subsequently, the analysis and the design of supporting technology must be sensitive to the cognitive and adaptive demands of the work and to the cognitive strategies employed by healthcare practitioners. Despite the vital role tha...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lintern, Gavan, Motavalli, Al
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5765659/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29325563
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0584-z
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author Lintern, Gavan
Motavalli, Al
author_facet Lintern, Gavan
Motavalli, Al
author_sort Lintern, Gavan
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Healthcare work is, to a considerable extent, cognitive. Subsequently, the analysis and the design of supporting technology must be sensitive to the cognitive and adaptive demands of the work and to the cognitive strategies employed by healthcare practitioners. Despite the vital role that cognition plays in healthcare work, current technocentric design approaches for healthcare technology do not account for it, failing to observe it during analysis and failing to develop support for it during design. MAIN BODY: By review and analysis of case studies, we show that healthcare systems developed without input from cognitive analysis and cognitive design fail to take account of important healthcare work processes and workflows. In contrast, systems developed with a cognitively-focused design strategy demonstrate how it is possible to introduce technology that supports and enhances the work strategies of those engaged in patient care. CONCLUSION: Significant problems emerge when technological support systems are developed without any serious and comprehensive attempt to understand the cognitive capabilities and skills deployed by those involved in patient care. In contrast, significant benefits accrue from taking full account of those cognitive capabilities and skills. Subsequently, the design and development of supporting technology must be sensitive to the cognitive demands of the work and the cognitive strategies employed by healthcare practitioners.
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spelling pubmed-57656592018-01-17 Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge Lintern, Gavan Motavalli, Al BMC Med Inform Decis Mak Debate BACKGROUND: Healthcare work is, to a considerable extent, cognitive. Subsequently, the analysis and the design of supporting technology must be sensitive to the cognitive and adaptive demands of the work and to the cognitive strategies employed by healthcare practitioners. Despite the vital role that cognition plays in healthcare work, current technocentric design approaches for healthcare technology do not account for it, failing to observe it during analysis and failing to develop support for it during design. MAIN BODY: By review and analysis of case studies, we show that healthcare systems developed without input from cognitive analysis and cognitive design fail to take account of important healthcare work processes and workflows. In contrast, systems developed with a cognitively-focused design strategy demonstrate how it is possible to introduce technology that supports and enhances the work strategies of those engaged in patient care. CONCLUSION: Significant problems emerge when technological support systems are developed without any serious and comprehensive attempt to understand the cognitive capabilities and skills deployed by those involved in patient care. In contrast, significant benefits accrue from taking full account of those cognitive capabilities and skills. Subsequently, the design and development of supporting technology must be sensitive to the cognitive demands of the work and the cognitive strategies employed by healthcare practitioners. BioMed Central 2018-01-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5765659/ /pubmed/29325563 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0584-z Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Debate
Lintern, Gavan
Motavalli, Al
Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
title Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
title_full Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
title_fullStr Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
title_full_unstemmed Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
title_short Healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
title_sort healthcare information systems: the cognitive challenge
topic Debate
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5765659/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29325563
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0584-z
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