Design of documentation for handheld ergonomics: presenting clinical evidence at the point of care

Medical doctors require high quality clinical evidence at the point of care in order to support their decision-making. Presentation of clinical evidence on handheld devices, and in a timely fashion, requires an integrated approach to documentation and ergonomic design. This paper reports on results from The Bringing Evidence to the Point of Care Project at the University of Toronto, concerning the display of quantitative data as part of clinical evidence. After introducing the problem and some of the relevant background literature, we indicate some prototype designs for presenting quantitative information on a handheld device, as graphs or tables. We then report on an initial usability study that compares the different prototypes. The results indicate that the doctors preferred statistical information to be presented as tables on the handheld device used in this study (in preference to lists or graphs).