Vol. 22 No. 1 (2025)
Research Article

A Usability Evaluation of a Touchscreen Workstation on Wheels in a Simulated Emergency Department Workflow

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Saad Razzaq
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Omar Idrissi
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Jake Rose
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Santiago Marquez
Division of Centre of Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), Research Institute of the MUHC
Jose Correa
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University
Antony Robert
Department of Emergency Medicine, McGill University Health Centre
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26443/mjm.v22i1.1150

Published 2025-06-01

Keywords

  • healthcare information technology,
  • workflow efficiency,
  • Emergency Department,
  • electronic medical records,
  • touchscreen

How to Cite

1.
Razzaq S, Idrissi O, Rose J, Marquez S, Correa J, Robert A. A Usability Evaluation of a Touchscreen Workstation on Wheels in a Simulated Emergency Department Workflow. McGill J Med [Internet]. 2025 Jun. 1 [cited 2025 Dec. 20];22(1):1-9. Available from: https://mjm.mcgill.ca/article/view/1150

Copyright (c) 2025 Saad Razzaq, Omar Idrissi, Jake Rose, Santiago Marquez, Jose Correa, Antony Robert

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

Background: Touchscreens have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, offering a comfortable and natural human-technology interactive experience. There exists a gap in the literature regarding the usability and efficiency of a touchscreen workstation on wheels (WOW) within an emergency department (ED) workflow, specifically with electronic medical record (EMR) systems designed for keyboard and mouse.

Methods: This was a randomized, controlled, 2-intervention-2-period crossover study comparing a touchscreen to a non-touchscreen WOW. Participants were asked to complete a series of seven tasks that are typically done in the ED followed by the completion of a post-study questionnaire.

Results: A total of 24 people (12 attendings, 12 resident physicians) participated in the study. Results from the linear mixed model regression analyses showed no evidence to reject the hypothesis that the average time to complete each task and the average total time to complete all tasks combined were similar (p>0.05) between the touchscreen and non-touchscreen WOW. Results from the post-study questionnaire using a 7-point Likert scale (Figure 1) demonstrated that the majority (>50%) of participants agreed to most questions favoring intention to use (BU), ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU), and attitude towards utilization (AU) of the touchscreen WOW.

Conclusion: This study builds on previous work on touchscreen devices by specifically evaluating the usability and efficiency of touchscreen WOWs in a controlled, simulation-based setting, differentiating from prior studies on tablets at the bedside. Future studies, should evaluate the impact of touchscreen-friendly EMR designs on clinical workflows in the ED.

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