Yan Xiao, PhD Wednesday, November 20th noon in ITE 459

Electronic health record (EHR) is an integral part of work in growing number of healthcare organizations. Quality of care received by patients and quality of working life of frontline professionals are increasingly tied to EHR. This presentation will share the experience of improving EHR usability in an integrated healthcare delivery organization, the largest in Texas.

Usability as experienced by frontline clinicians is an evolving property of a complex socio-technical system, with leveraging points in hardware infrastructure, user training, technical support services, on-going system integration, optimization, and organizational policies. Case studies will be used to illustrate the role of human factors in understanding usability challenges, in defining approaches to improve EHR related safety and quality, and in identifying research opportunities. On-going projects sponsored both internally and by federal Office of National Coordinator for Health Information technology will be presented as well.

Biographic information: Yan Xiao leads the human factors program at Baylor Heath Care System, Dallas, Texas, and conducts patient safety research sponsored by the federal government. He is adjunct professor at University of Texas at Arlington, and previously adjunct professor at UMBC. His education includes a PhD in human factors from University of Toronto in 1994 and a Masters degree in systems engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology in 1985. He published more than 60 peer reviewed journal articles in the past 20 years in key aspects of human factors, including collaborative work, team leadership, and information systems. He left academia as a tenured full professor of anesthesiology at University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2009. As principal investigators his work has been sponsored by such federal agencies as National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, NASA, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Industry support for his work! came from top telecommunication, medical devices, and defense companies. He has two patents related to technology support for team performance. He is on editorial board for Human Factors & Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making. He serves in a standing panel of AHRQ to advise federal government on sponsored research.