tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733074358901582680.post5793847270851836079..comments2024-03-23T05:28:35.472-04:00Comments on Healthcare Standards: Telling StoriesKeith W. Boonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16883038460949909300noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733074358901582680.post-8192804970438998402014-01-09T16:02:01.640-05:002014-01-09T16:02:01.640-05:00PS: Also see this January 6 post on HealthIT.gov&...PS: Also see <a href="http://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/electronic-health-and-medical-records/usability-ehrs-remains-priority-onc/" rel="nofollow">this January 6 post</a> on HealthIT.gov's BuzzBlog. An excerpt:<br /><br /><em>c) Legacy software in a high-risk environment will evolve slowly – for good reason. One can’t change workflow or user experience too quickly, as changes in the user interface can increase error rates even if the new design is better for new users. Errors can harm or kill people. Developers need to evolve user experience slowly and carefully. Usability won’t improve overnight.</em>Chris W.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733074358901582680.post-56247847912727352582014-01-09T15:52:22.709-05:002014-01-09T15:52:22.709-05:00The last sentence of your first paragraph prompted...The last sentence of your first paragraph prompted me to think of <a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html" rel="nofollow">this essay by E. W. Dijkstra</a> (EWD 1036) which I read very recently for another reason. It begins this way:<br /><br /><em>The second part of this talk pursues some of the scientific and educational consequences of the assumption that computers represent a radical novelty. In order to give this assumption clear contents, we have to be much more precise as to what we mean in this context by the adjective "radical". We shall do so in the first part of this talk, in which we shall furthermore supply evidence in support of our assumption.<br /><br />The usual way in which we plan today for tomorrow is in yesterday's vocabulary. We do so, because we try to get away with the concepts we are familiar with and that have acquired their meanings in our past experience. Of course, the words and the concepts don't quite fit because our future differs from our past, but then we stretch them a little bit. Linguists are quite familiar with the phenomenon that the meanings of words evolve over time, but also know that this is a slow and gradual process.<br /><br />It is the most common way of trying to cope with novelty: by means of metaphors and analogies we try to link the new to the old, the novel to the familiar. Under sufficiently slow and gradual change, it works reasonably well; in the case of a sharp discontinuity, however, the method breaks down: though we may glorify it with the name "common sense", our past experience is no longer relevant, the analogies become too shallow, and the metaphors become more misleading than illuminating. This is the situation that is characteristic for the "radical" novelty.<br /><br />Coping with radical novelty requires an orthogonal method. One must consider one's own past, the experiences collected, and the habits formed in it as an unfortunate accident of history, and one has to approach the radical novelty with a blank mind, consciously refusing to try to link it with what is already familiar, because the familiar is hopelessly inadequate. One has, with initially a kind of split personality, to come to grips with a radical novelty as a dissociated topic in its own right. Coming to grips with a radical novelty amounts to creating and learning a new foreign language that can not be translated into one's mother tongue. (Any one who has learned quantum mechanics knows what I am talking about.) Needless to say, adjusting to radical novelties is not a very popular activity, for it requires hard work. For the same reason, the radical novelties themselves are unwelcome.</em>Chris W.noreply@blogger.com