Towards systematic usability evaluations for the OR: An introduction to OR-use framework

Abstract

It has been shown that usability of intra-operative computer-based systems has a direct impact on patient outcome and patient safety. There are several tools to facilitate the usability testing in other domains, however, there is no such tool for the operating room. In this work, after investigating the features of the existing tools in other domains and observing the practical requirements specific to the OR, we summarize key functionalities that should be provided in a usability testing support tool for intra-operative devices. Furthermore, we introduce the OR-Use framework, a tool developed for supporting usability evaluation for the OR and designed to fulfill the introduced requirements. Finally, we report about several performed tests to evaluate the performance of the proposed framework. We also report about the usability tests which have been conducted up until now using this tool. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.