ABSTRACT
The introduction of electronic medical records and other electronic software tools to healthcare has brought great benefits to patients and providers. The Washington Patient Safety Coalition commissioned a report to enhance patient safety by identifying electronic health record related risks and ways of mitigating them. The government has recognized that if health IT systems are not designed and used correctly, they can introduce new risks in addition to their expected benefits. As vendors are exempt from liability, the burden of safety evaluation would be the responsibility of healthcare organizations. Safety studies are performed as an initial requirement for demonstrating that technology is developed (manufactured) to a standard that will not render it, in itself, a risk to users (patients). It is customized for use in EMR usability testing, modified from software engineering-Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) Common Industry Format for usability test reports.
