Can Health Information Systems be Simple and Complex? yes.
I came across this interesting article by Panatazi and colleagues (2006). They argue that health information systems cannot be usable and useful at the same time. Information systems are of two parts: a user interface and a problem solving engine. One of the goals of the problem solving engine is to be useful through solving medical problems. Medical problems tend to be complex. This complexity will eventually creep into the the user interface making it less simple and though less usable. There are many examples in reality. If you look around you will notice that usable systems tend to solve simple problems only. Calculators are highly usable and simple but only solve simple problems. Once you get into the more advanced scientific calculators you loose the simplicity and uablility.
The authors make a vary good argument, and shed light on some solutions that need not yet present technologies. But, they miss on one critical factor. That is the user brain. I believe the best way to solve this “usability usefulness paradox”, as called by the authors, is to allow the user brain bridge the gap between usability and usefulness i.e. have a simple and usable interface that allows that user to solve complex problems. The other part of information system, the problem solving engine, would only perform jobs that would not interfere with the user cognitive processes and would not add complexities to the user interface.
International Journal of Medical Informatics
