Group differences in physician responses to handheld presentation of clinical evidence: a verbal protocol analysis
Date
2007-07-26
Authors
Lottridge, Danielle M
Chignell, Mark
Danicic-Mizdrak, Romana
Pavlovic, Nada J
Kushniruk, Andre
Straus, Sharon E
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
Background: To identify individual differences in physicians' needs for the presentation of
evidence resources and preferences for mobile devices.
Methods: Within-groups analysis of responses to semi-structured interviews. Interviews
consisted of using prototypes in response to task-based scenarios. The prototypes were
implemented on two different form factors: a tablet style PC and a pocketPC. Participants were
from three user groups: general internists, family physicians and medicine residents, and from two
different settings: urban and semi-urban. Verbal protocol analysis, which consists of coding
utterances, was conducted on the transcripts of the testing sessions. Statistical relationships were
investigated between staff physicians' and residents' background variables, self-reported
experiences with the interfaces, and verbal code frequencies.
Results: 47 physicians were recruited from general internal medicine, family practice clinics and a
residency training program. The mean age of participants was 42.6 years. Physician specialty had a
greater effect on device and information-presentation preferences than gender, age, setting or
previous technical experience. Family physicians preferred the screen size of the tablet computer
and were less concerned about its portability. Residents liked the screen size of the tablet, but
preferred the portability of the pocketPC. Internists liked the portability of the pocketPC, but saw
less advantage to the large screen of the tablet computer (F[2,44] = 4.94, p = .012).
Conclusion: Different types of physicians have different needs and preferences for evidence-based
resources and handheld devices. This study shows how user testing can be incorporated into the
process of design to inform group-based customization.
Description
BioMed Central
Keywords
Citation
Lottridge, D. et al. Group differences in physician responses to handheld presentation of clinical evidence BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2007, 7 :22