What clinicians want from healthcare information systems: A survey-based cross-sectional study at a Swiss tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Little is known about the key demands of clinicians in regard to healthcare information systems (HIS). We therefore aimed to describe important characteristics of user-friendly HIS from a clinicians’ perspective. In November 2015, we consecutively e-mailed two anonymized web-based surveys to all clinicians working at the Department of Internal Medicine of the University Hospital Basel. The surveys did not focus on a specific HIS. The first survey asked for the single most important characteristic of user-friendly HIS and the second survey requested to further sub-categorize these characteristics. The response rates for the first and second survey were 48.2% (40/83 clinicians) and 39.8% (33/83), respectively. In the first survey, the most frequently mentioned characteristics of user-friendly HIS were a “rapid retrieval of relevant clinical data” in 54.3% (19/35), an “easy to use interface” in 17.1% (6/35) and a “simple visual design” in 17.1% (6/35). In the second survey, clinicians divided the main characteristic “rapid retrieval of relevant clinical data” in the following sub-categories: A “simple software architecture” in 97.0% (32/33), the “availability of strong search tools” in 93.9% (31/33), the “presence of only few interface layers” in 72.7% (24/33), an“automatic alerting system” in 63.6% (21/33) and an “overview of important clinical data in one window” in 54.5% (18/33). In conclusion, the clinicians’ top priority in regard to HIS was to quickly find relevant patient information. Developers of HIS should particularly focus on creating intuitive interfaces with powerful search engines and clear visualization of clinical data.