Biomedical Informatics Research Center

Current Events

Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation Forms Interactive Clinical Design Institute

The design of effective computer systems in health care requires an understanding of the way that patients and health care professionals interact with computers. The ICDI brings together scientists, physicians, and information specialists with varied expertise to address the challenge of developing health care technology that improves health care quality, reduces costs and is easy to use.

The ways that doctors, nurses, administrative staff, and patients interact with health care technology is an especially important factor in designing such technology. The ICDI’s Interaction Laboratory is a state-of-the-art usability laboratory designed to study the process of people interacting with health care computer hardware, software, and Internet resources. Located in the new North Building of the Laird Center for Medical Research, this is one of a handful of usability laboratories in the country dedicated to health care.

Justin Starren, M.D., Ph.D., BIRC director, stated that the ICDI also offers training and education opportunities, including the Security Health Plan Fellowship in Interactive Clinical Design. This fellowship provides one to two years of post-doctoral training in the design and evaluation of interactive health care technology.

The first recipient of the fellowship is David Pieczkiewicz, Ph.D., who earned his doctorate degree in health informatics from the University of Minnesota. His research interests include medical data visualization, human-computer interaction and usability, decision support systems and telemedicine.

Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation (MCRF) announces the formation of the Interactive Clinical Design Institute (ICDI) at its Biomedical Informatics Research Center (BIRC).

The ICDI was made possible by a generous investment by Security Health Plan (SHP).

“As computers become an indispensable part of the health care process, it is critical to understand the ways that patients and providers interact with them,” said Steven Youso, Security Health Plan chief administrative officer. “Security Health Plan’s investment in this work is aimed at delivering health care information technology that improves efficiency and provides better care for patients.”

World Usability Day 2008 a Success

The tremendous World Usability Day community held over 170 events in 43 countries for World Usability Day 2008.

What is World Usability Day?

It's about making our world work better. It's about "Making Life Easy" and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first…

World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 225 events are organized in over 40 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.