Fortunately, the growing field of healthcare informatics can help by applying user-centered design methods to a range of critical projects.
Data-driven professionals, such as chief medical informatics officers and chief nursing informatics officers, can lead their teams to optimize EHR, telehealth and patient portal applications, along with other technologies, so providers can easily access the right information to support the best clinical decision making in real time.
How Medical Informaticists Benefit Providers and Patients
With their focus on understanding end-user needs and improving the process with a higher degree of acceptance, informaticists are well suited to improve the functionality and usability of health IT solutions. They can even redesign workflows to suit specific roles, such as nurses, patients, caregivers or even a billing department.
When it comes to optimizing an EHR, informaticists can guide the journey. They may choose to reduce the number of clicks needed to access information, to display the most relevant historical information for a clinician to reference during an appointment or to build out preset fields that capture the most critical information based on the nature of the visit (an annual checkup versus a specialist appointment, for example).
They also can streamline patient discharge processes, make patient portals more user friendly, adjust the number of times a clinician needs to enter login credentials across all IT systems and more.
Informaticists are uniquely positioned to help because most of them began their careers as trained clinicians. With backgrounds that span nursing to radiology, they have firsthand exposure to the same tools, workflows and related limitations.
This hybrid skill set allows informaticists to target and articulate what’s missing and how best to address those gaps.