Abstract
Results are presented of the user evaluation of an integrated medical workstation
for support of clinical research. Twenty-seven users were recruited from medical and
scientific staff of the University Hospital Dijkzigt, the Faculty of Medicine of the
Erasmus University Rotterdam, and from other Dutch medical institutions; and all were
given a written, self-contained tutorial. Subsequently, an experiment was done in
which six clinical data analysis problems had to be solved and an evaluation form
was filled out. The aim of this user evaluation was to obtain insight in the benefits
of integration for support of clinical data analysis for clinicians and biomedical
researchers. The problems were divided into two sets, with gradually more complex
problems. In the first set users were guided in a stepwise fashion to solve the problems.
In the second set each stepwise problem had an open counterpart. During the evaluation,
the workstation continuously recorded the user’s actions. From these results significant
differences became apparent between clinicians and non-clinicians for the correctness
(means 54% and 81%, respectively, p = 0.04), completeness (means 64% and 88%, respectively,
p = 0.01), and number of problems solved (means 67% and 90%, respectively, p = 0.02).
These differences were absent for the stepwise problems. Physicians tend to skip more
problems than biomedical researchers. No statistically significant differences were
found between users with and without clinical data analysis experience, for correctness
(means 74% and 72%, respectively, p = 0.95), and completeness (means 82% and 79%,
respectively, p = 0.40). It appeared that various clinical research problems can be
solved easily with support of the workstation; the results of this experiment can
be used as guidance for the development of the successor of this prototype workstation
and serve as a reference for the assessment of next versions.
Key-Words
Integration - Evaluation - Workstation
