Designing a Useful and Usable Mobile EMR Application through a Participatory Design Methodology: A Case Study

An electronic medical record (EMR) supports the general practitioner (GP) in decision-making. In this paper, we report on our study, in which we analyze and identify user requirements for a mobile EMR application. By relying on a participatory design approach, we were able to identify the most relevant patient data for house visits by a GP. Our findings further refine earlier results from similar research by narrowing down the most important information for GPs that should be visible immediately. We also identify five core considerations for the use of a mobile EMR application during a house visit. These five considerations are translated into five requirements: exploiting mobile affordances, immediate availability, quick overview of most relevant data, easy entry of new patient data and the importance of e-prescriptions. We iteratively designed the user interface for a mobile application that meets these requirements. Thus, by taking advantage of the affordances of a mobile device, including context sensing, we optimized the way a GP can use a mobile EMR application.