ABSTRACT
Healthcare is evolving: towards greater reliance on interactive technologies, and more care being delivered outside clinical settings. This places increasing demands on healthcare technologies to be truly usable, by people with limited medical knowledge but whose health depends on effective use of the technology. Available technologies range from devices, such as blood pressure monitors, that can be bought over-the-counter to home haemodialysis systems that require extensive training and clinical oversight. While classical usability studies of these technologies are necessary, they are not sufficient to ensure that products are truly usable and safe in the intended (and maybe even unexpected) contexts of use. For example, poor lighting can render the displays of mobile devices unreadable; audible alarms can wake people up unnecessarily; people discover workarounds that may compromise the safety of devices (O’Connor, 2010); and interruptions may make it difficult for people to reconstruct where they were in a task. To fully assess the appropriateness of the design of existing systems, and identify requirements for next-generation products, it is essential to study use in context. This can be challenging for any product, but particularly so in healthcare: for example, they are typically used by people who are overworked, stressed or unwell; there is great variety in the settings in which they are used; and the human factors researcher typically has limited understanding of the health conditions being treated.
