MEDIGATE System: An Evaluation of its Use in Healthcare Settings

This report provides an overview of the MEDIGATE system, a medical examination tool designed for healthcare professionals. It explores the system's introduction, outlining its purpose in facilitating patient examinations and data tracking. The report delves into the use cases of MEDIGATE, emphasizing its icon-based data entry and modification features, allowing physicians to record patient details and represent findings graphically. The evaluation section discusses the methodology used to assess the system's effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction, including the application of the IMPACT model. Usability, adaptability, and efficiency were assessed in a controlled clinical setup. The report concludes with a summary of the evaluation's findings, highlighting the importance of user-centered design in healthcare technology. The report references key literature related to human factors, usability, and clinical pharmacology.

MEDIGATE SYSTEM

Outline
 Introduction to MEDIGATE System
 The use cases
 Evaluation
 Appraisal

Introduction
 The Medical Examination Direct Iconic
and Graphic Augmented Text Entry
(MEDIGATE) system is a very important
tool that’s used by health care
professionals such as the physicians. It’s
used by physicians to examine patients
with a lot of ease and comfort. Also, it’s
used to keep the track of the patient’s
data (Stanton et al. 2017).

The use cases
 The system was developed basing on the
idea that the use of icons will be of great
assistance to the physicians in examining
the conditions of the patients. The
information is recorded in form of icons,
therefore, making the whole
representation to be perceived as
pictures.
 MITIGATE system allows physicians to
enter and modify the data of the patient.

Cont.…
 The physicians can record the details of
their patients that can be used for future
reference in case the problem develops
again. Afterwards, the physician can
describe the reason for the problem
identified in form of drawing
representations (Schwedhelm et al.
2008).
 Complex of multiple findings in a given
region may be formed with various
iconic designs, hence depicting

Evaluation
 Physicians requires an interactive system that can
meet their needs. Furthermore, the system should be
operated with a lot of ease (Stanton et al 2017).
 Therefore, the programmers need to involve the
physicians in the entire process of system designing
ranging from determination of system requirements
to the process of system testing.
 Afterwards, the system should be assessed basing
on its requirements.

Methodology
 The goal of the examination included
assessing physicians take on MEDIGATE
system’s effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction with its use
 Structured scenarios were used, then a
focused debriefing conducted to collect
data on various aspects of the system
 The Intention, Metrics, People,
Activities, Context and Technologies
(IMPACT) model was used to conduct the
evaluation

What?: Measuring Usability
 Usability is the distance between the user’s and
designer’s mental models (Wiegmann and Shappell,
2017)
 Overall usability of MEDIGATE system was high due to
a well developed user interface.
 MEDIGATE system was easy to learn & use but was
less efficient.

Why?: to check adaptability
 Examination of the system is required to ascertain the
functionality of the system in regard to the system
specification.
 MEDIGATE System posed a diversion from highly used
pen-paper means of recording physical exam findings
 It emerged that most physicians found the system less
efficient hence not suitable for emergency setups

Where?: controlled clinical
setup
 Features of MEDIGATE system were
evaluated in a controlled clinical setup
 This enabled evaluators to focus the
evaluation on specific aspects of the
system.

Conclusion
 “If we have trouble using something
then it’s probably because that thing
is badly designed, rather than us
being stupid”

References
 Stanton, N.A., Salmon, P.M., Rafferty, L.A., Walker, G.H., Baber, C. and Jenkins,
D.P., 2017. Human factors methods: a practical guide for engineering and design.
CRC Press.
 Schwedhelm, E., Maas, R., Freese, R., Jung, D., Lukacs, Z.,
Jambrecina, A., Spickler, W., Schulze, F. and Böger, R.H., 2008.
Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of oral L‐
citrulline and L‐arginine: impact on nitric oxide metabolism. British
journal of clinical pharmacology, 65(1), pp.51-59.
 Wiegmann, D.A. and Shappell, S.A., 2017. A human error approach
to aviation accident analysis: The human factors analysis and
classification system. Routledge.