Design and development of interface design principles for complex documentation using PDAs

The screen interface has been believed to be the major barrier for the adoption of PDAs in healthcare. The study objectives were to design a set ofscreen interface design principles for complex documentation using PDAs and to examine nurses' perception of the ease of use and usefulness of theapplication. A 21-page Chinese version of theinterRAI MDS-HC home-care assessment toolcomposed of more than 250 assessment questions was used for the application. A WiFi Palm-based PDA was used. A convenience sample of 60 subjects, primarily nurses newly trained touse the MDS-HC assessment tool, were invited to evaluate the PDA system in terms of Davis' Technology Acceptance Model. The final information structure of the PDA application consisted of 18 categories composed of 262 questions over 63screens. Subjects could move to any assessment question in less than two taps without amemory burden and finish the question in one tap. Respectively, close to 95% and 93% of the subjects agreed that, overall, the system was easy to use and useful for their work. We conclude the screen interface challenge for complex documentation using PDAs can be improved and managed to achieve to a very high usability.