MDFLUXO: Ophtalmology Education with a PDA Efficacy and Usability Evaluation

In the last decade, handheld computers, also known as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), have become popular among physicians, residents and medical students. We have developed a PDA-software, called MDFluxo, to assist ophthalmologic teaching as a guide. We used a user-centered design to try to diminish usability problems. It’s interesting that the literature concerning PDA use on health area doesn’t emphasize usability attributes and it’s evaluation, which is important to widespread PDA use among health professionals. MDFluxo efficacy was evaluated comparing it to traditional book guide and a non-guide self-learning. Usability inspection methods, such as Think Aloud Method, Nielsen Heuristic Evaluation, QUIS 5.0 adaptation, and Cognitive Walkthrough are being used to identify usability problems. The usability inspection methods help us to identify usability problems and correct them. We evidenced that the students who used MDFluxo improved the resolution of the clinical case when compared to participants which did not use any material as support, however there was no significant difference when comparing the MDFluxo students to students using a book, thus, as a support to ophthalmology learning, MDFluxo is an efficacy tool.