user experience (UX)

See the following -

CIS Mobile Announces altOS on Pixel 4a Smartphones

Press Release | CIS Mobile | December 9, 2020

CIS Mobile, an Acorn Growth Company and a mobile security leader, announced the availability of altOS on the Pixel 4a smartphone. By combining the latest Pixel hardware and our altOS secure mobility platform, government customers now can protect sensitive data while using the latest high-performance smartphone. CIS Mobile’s altOS is a security-enhanced Android operating system designed with the extra management, security, and privacy features needed for sensitive government use cases, and used by multiple government intelligence and defense agencies.

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CIS Mobile Announces Major Update to the altOS Platform

Press Release | CIS Mobile | September 9, 2020

CIS Mobile, a leader in mobile security, today announced the release of altOS 10. This new major release adds significant security, management, and control features for sensitive government user cases and updates the altOS operating system to Android 10. In addition to the new privacy features incorporated into Android 10, this major update to the altOS platform includes...Secure Mode upgrades. Secure Mode enables altOS devices to dynamically control access to peripherals that might be used to exfiltrate data from sensitive government sites, or that could reveal sensitive location data to a foreign adversary.

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Could Pokémon Go Help Fix Healthcare and Lead to Usable EHRs?

However promising gamification in health care may be, it is the AR that may well hold the most promise for health care.  Google was not wrong to pursue Google Glass, just premature. Pokémon Go may be signaling that we're now finally ready for AR, and that it will be consumers as well as professionals who can benefit from it. The potential uses in health care are virtually endless, but here are a few examples...Ever feel like your doctor spends too much time staring at your chart or a screen? Instead of looking there for information about you, how much better would it be if he/she was looking at you, with AR notations for key information about you?...

EHR Usability Gaps -- ONC and AHRQ Identify Serious Shortcomings of Certified EHRs

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provided providers with a significant financial incentive to increase the adoption and use of EHRs. EHR vendors were required to conduct and report on a summative usability evaluation of their system as part of the Stage 2 Meaningful Use program (The ONC 2014 Edition Certification). However, a recent report funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), identified several “issues” with the certified EHR vendors in the processes, practices and use of standards and best practices with regard to usability and human factors.

EHRs Inflict Enormous Pain on Doctors. It’ll Take More Than Stopwatches to Learn Why

Jonathan Bush | STAT | September 6, 2016

Electronic health records slow doctors down and distract them from meaningful face time caring for patients. That is the sad but unsurprising finding of a time and motion study published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine1. A team of researchers determined that physicians are spending almost half of their time in the office on electronic health records (EHRs) and desk work and just 27 percent on face time with patients — which is what the vast majority of doctors went into medicine to do. Once they get home, they average another one to two hours completing EHRs...

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EHRs Not Meeting The Challenges Of Primary Care According To New Study

Press Release | Regenstrief Institute | June 15, 2021

"The human mind can do many things well. Digesting vast amounts of patient information while multitasking in time-constrained situations exposes a limitation. EHR technology should be able to complement or enhance physicians' abilities in these scenarios," said Regenstrief Institute Research Scientist April Savoy, PhD, who led the new study. "But current EHRs are overloading primary care physicians with information in disparate files and folders rather than presenting comprehensive, actionable data in a context that gives meaning.

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Getting started as a GitLab contributor

GitLab's open culture is one of its strongest assets and the main reason I use GitLab in DevOps transformations. The community edition's code is open source and the paid version makes its source code available for contributions. These are valuable factors rooted in the company culture its CEO has diligently maintained over the years. It doesn't hurt that its tools are great, too. I believe GitLab's sales and marketing team is the best of any company out there. They have included me as a user, customer, and friend over the last few years, and they are genuine and caring people. This was underscored last year when I wanted to contribute a feature, and GitLab's team went to extraordinary lengths to help me succeed. Here's the story of making my first contribution to GitLab.

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Hi, Engineering, I’m UX. Let’s be friends

Mason Foster | Venture Beat | October 24, 2015

The relationship between user experience (UX) and engineering is a crucial factor when it comes to generating technical innovation. After spending a week at the SXSW Interactive festival earlier this year, I was struck by the number of missed opportunities to nurture this relationship or even understand it better. UX professionals and engineers just don’t talk, and when they do they usually speak different languages.

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How to Care for the Community Over the Code

At All Things Open 2016, Joe Brockmeier answers the question: How can companies can work effectively with open source communities? In his talk, Joe reminded us of the #1 open source myth: Open source is comprised of mostly volunteers. The truth is, these days, pretty much any major open source project has people who are paid to work on it. There are always people who do it because they love it, but these days most of us are paid (and still love it). Over the years we have learned that if you want patches in a timely manner, you need people who are paid to do it...

Inside the Design-Thinking Environment USDS Is Creating at CMS

Samantha Ehlinger | Fed Scoop | September 13, 2016

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is looking to craft its extensive Quality Payment Program with a user-centered design program baked in, an official said Monday. And with the user at the center, that means completely changing the way those program requirements are created...

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Instead of a Weapon For Health Care Improvement, Monitoring Becomes Another Battleground

Andy Oram | EMR & EHR | September 3, 2015

If you wax enthusiastic about “patient engagement,” or work with health and fitness devices, or want to derive useful data from patient monitoring in the field, or–basically–read this blog for any reason at all, you should check out a recent study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. It warns about psychological and logistical factors that trip us up when we try to get patients to monitor their vital signs. The paper has a catchier title than most: “You Get Reminded You’re a Sick Person”: Personal Data Tracking and Patients With Multiple Chronic Conditions (citation: J Med Internet Res 2015;17(8):e202)...

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Jean Piaget & the Usability of Healthcare Software

The usability of healthcare software, or lack thereof, has been a topic of discussion for several years. The problem has become so widespread that the American Medical Association (AMA) has recently issued a framework for improving the ease of use of EHRs that, in part, includes the reduction of 'cognitive load.' Piaget’s theories can be applied to understanding some of the reasons why many EHRs are just too hard to use. They can provide guidance for finding ways to reduce the cognitive workload that so often hinders the user experience of EHR systems. Read More »

Learn the Secrets of Building a Business with Open Source

Today, if you’re building a new product or service, open source software is likely playing a role. But many entrepreneurs and product managers still struggle with how to build a successful business purely on open source. The big secret of a successful open source business is that “it’s about way more than the code,” says John Mark Walker, a well-known voice in the open source world with extensive expertise in open source product, community, and ecosystem creation at Red Hat and Dell EMC.  “In order to build a certified, predictable, manageable product that ‘just works,’ it requires a lot more effort than just writing good code.”...

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Make No Little Plans

Ever seen the new TV show 'Pure Genius'?  Probably not; its ratings are dismal.  I've seen it, and, well, it isn't very good.  But what I like is the premise: a young tech billionaire builds a hospital using only the latest technology, and treats patients regardless of cost. Gotta give the creators props for trying to re-imagine hospitals.  The health care industry could do with some serious attempts at re-imaging, and not just for hospitals. What made me think about this were two stories about the auto industry, which is desperately trying to remain relevant in a world of Uber, self-driving cars, and our love affair with our various digital devices...

On the Need for Human-Centered Design in EHRs

Health information technology (HIT) has become the hottest political issue in Washington. The healthcare industry in the United States is facing a crisis as medical facilities have spent hundreds of billions of dollars implementing electronic health record (EHR) systems, yet patients and the physicians and nurses that care for them are seeing few benefits. Congress has been holding hearings focused on detailing the problems and trying to write legislation that will provide a solution to the crisis. The HIT interoperability bill drafted by Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) is one example. These are welcome first steps. However, none of the bills currently before Congress, and none of the hearings, are addressing the two most important issues facing medical providers today. These are lack of EHR usability, and the inability to have a patients’ entire medical record at the point of care.

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