Using cognitive models to evaluate safety-critical interfaces in healthcare

We investigated the feasibility of using a GOMSL model to assess the user interface of a medications prescribing application in a hospital setting. A GOMSL model was developed for key prescribing tasks identified in an observational study. Task execution times predicted by the GOMSL model for six clinical scenarios were comparable with times from a pilot user study. Model-based evaluation may be useful in identifying features more susceptible to errors in safety-critical healthcare interfaces.