Best Practices for Reducing Interface Errors in Electronic Medical Records

As Electronic Medical Records (EMR) become increasingly prevalent, the application of human factors principles is essential to facilitate efficiency and usability of these systems and, in turn, to reduce adverse patient outcomes due to user errors relating to the EMR. This paper describes five “best practices” found in the literature which aim to prevent error in the use of Electronic Medical Records. These practices are: Watermarking, Information Control and Management, Hybrid Systems, Cross-Checking Methodology, and Interface Modification. The paper describes each practice and examines the research underlying each approach. Although some practices may be easier to apply than others, they all merit further research and have potential for error prevention on a large scale.