By Gemma Simpson, 8 March 2007 16:30
Microsoft will spend a total of £40m - just over one per cent of its £3.4bn annual development budget - on the CUI, for which the company solicited advice and information from around 180 clinicians.
The interface presents a variety of information in many different ways. Pictured is an X-ray of a bunion on the top half of the screen and on the lower half there are a selection of 'care pathways'.
The care pathways are basically segmented to-do lists reminding the clinician to take the patient's blood pressure, heart rate, send the X-ray to a foot specialist and so on.
The clinicians can bypass any steps they feel are unnecessary. Susan Brown, Microsoft's user experience program manager, said: "The expert will make the decisions, not the interface".
The software behemoth is still trying to decide how to present so much complex information to the user. Kirby said this is hard to do because clinicians want all the information they have available in one go.
Photo credit: Microsoft
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Roger Huffadine
There are already blogs that show the proposed NHS interface won't work under Vista with the existing hardware. For the system to be able to render the X ray photos in any detail - every PC in the NHS will need to be swapped out for a 100% Vista capable PC. Microsoft know this I hope that the Secretary of State for Health has been told.
2. Alastair Warren
Thanks Roger. I didn't know that.
Sounds like more £$£$ to Microsoft and still less on MRSA and C Difficile infection control, and post operative cancer follow up.
3. anonymous
you have got to be kidding, those thumbnails are tiny!
4. Dr Alison Grimston
There is no way we will be able to work with this - time is already restricted, if we have to state whether every sore throat is mild or severe (with 2-3 extra clicks) and stop every time we are prescribing potential drug drug interactions (which we have already considered and discussed with the patients) we will need 30 minutes for each appointment instead of 10 - but the time would be much better spent lstening to & explaining to the patient.