Explaining Healthcare IT application UI complexity

A friend of mine sent me this drawing a little while ago.

I have performed many usability analyses on healthcare IT software and I usually end up writing many pages of a “summary report” which should probably include the diagram shown above. It crystallizes the reason why HISs, EMRs, and other healthcare IT software gets a bad rap – they are often more complex to use and significantly more difficult train than many other commercial applications.

Yes, healthcare applications aren’t exactly the same as MP3 players and search engines but we can certainly learn from “minimalist” user interfaces and ease the burden on our users.

I’ve invited a couple of usability experts to come talk about why healthcare IT app UI’s need to be complex or how they can be simplified. If you’re an expert in usability and want to talk about it here as a guest author, drop me a note below.