Designing Clinical Data Presentation in Electronic Dental Records Using Cognitive Task Analysis Methods

Despite the many decades of research on the effective development of clinical systems in medicine, the adoption of health information technology to improve patient care continues to be slow, especially in ambulatory settings. This applies to dentistry as well, a primary care discipline with approximately 137,000 practitioners in the United States. A critical reason for slow adoption is the poor usability of clinical systems, which makes it difficult for providers to navigate through the information and obtain an integrated view of patient data. Cognitive science methods have shown significant promise to meaningfully inform the design, development and assessment of clinical information systems. In most cases, these methods have been applied to evaluate the design of systems after they have been developed. Very few studies, on the other hand, have used cognitive engineering methods to support the design process for a system itself. It is this gap in knowledge how cognitive engineering methods can be optimally applied to inform the system design process that our research seeks to address. This project studied the cognitive processes and in-formation management strategies used by dentists during a typical patient exam and applied the results to inform the design of an electronic dental record interface. The results of this study will contribute to designing clinical systems that improve cognitive support for clinicians during patient care. Such a system has the potential to enhance the quality and safety of patient care, as well as reduce healthcare costs.