CLINICAL WORKSTATIONS - IDENTIFYING CLINICAL-REQUIREMENTS AND UNDERSTANDING CLINICAL INFORMATION

A preliminary exploration of the problem of defining and meeting users ' needs, this paper draws the bulk of its content from experiences in the PEN&PAD project in the UK. This program has been researching and d eveloping prototype clinical workstations for direct use in patient ca re by health care professionals, chiefly doctors. Focusing more on gen eral issues rather than the specific functional requirements embodied in the PEN&PAD prototypes, the paper begins with a brief summary of th e goals of PEN&PAD and then outlines the three main axes of the work: user-centred design, medical concept and medical record models, and us er interfaces and architectures. The remainder of the paper then conce ntrates on the first of these topics - working with users to define fu nctional requirements.