Biomedical subjects

Zhihua Tang

Publications and source records attributed to Zhihua Tang.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Applying heuristic evaluation to improve the usability of a telemedicine system.

The development of a telemedicine system should not only take advantage of technological advances but also pay close attention to users and the human issues involved. In this paper we examine the utility of heuristic evaluation in improving the usability of a digital emergency medical services (EMS) system equipped on an ambulance. The digital EMS system used advanced communication technologies to help remotely located trauma specialists gain access to patient data in real-time and direct life-saving measures in a timely fashion. To improve its usability, three experts inspected prototypes of the system according to 14 software usability heuristics. The analyses revealed information on the prevalence, severity, and nature of heuristic violations in the user interface design. The results were subsequently utilized to guide the iterative software design process. A comparison between two consecutive prototypes showed that the second design had only half as many usability violations as the first prototype and had considerable improvement in a number of usability heuristic categories. The validity of heuristic evaluation was examined in an ethnographic study of paramedics using a prototype of the system in their work environment. Users' task performances partially verified heuristic evaluation results. However, they also revealed problems that were not identified in heuristic evaluation but only became prominent during field observation. In conclusion, we argue that usability should be given high priority in the development of a telemedicine system, and that heuristic evaluation can be an effective and efficient way to identify usability problems in the early stage of software development.

Ambulances↗

PubMed2004

Comparing gene discovery from Affymetrix GeneChip microarrays and Clontech PCR-select cDNA subtraction: a case study.

BACKGROUND: Several high throughput technologies have been employed to identify differentially regulated genes that may be molecular targets for drug discovery. Here we compared the sets of differentially regulated genes discovered using two experimental approaches: a subtracted suppressive hybridization (SSH) cDNA library methodology and Affymetrix GeneChip technology. In this "case study" we explored the transcriptional pattern changes during the in vitro differentiation of human monocytes to myeloid dendritic cells (DC), and evaluated the potential for novel gene discovery using the SSH methodology. RESULTS: The same RNA samples isolated from peripheral blood monocyte precursors and immature DC (iDC) were used for GeneChip microarray probing and SSH cDNA library construction. 10,000 clones from each of the two-way SSH libraries (iDC-monocytes and monocytes-iDC) were picked for sequencing. About 2000 transcripts were identified for each library from 8000 successful sequences. Only 70% to 75% of these transcripts were represented on the U95 series GeneChip microarrays, implying that 25% to 30% of these transcripts might not have been identified in a study based only on GeneChip microarrays. In addition, about 10% of these transcripts appeared to be "novel", although these have not yet been closely examined. Among the transcripts that are also represented on the chips, about a third were concordantly discovered as differentially regulated between iDC and monocytes by GeneChip microarray transcript profiling. The remaining two thirds were either not inferred as differentially regulated from GeneChip microarray data, or were called differentially regulated but in the opposite direction. This underscores the importance both of generating reciprocal pairs of SSH libraries, and of real-time RT-PCR confirmation of the results. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that SSH could be used as an alternative and complementary transcript profiling tool to GeneChip microarrays, especially in identifying novel genes and transcripts of low abundance.

Dendritic Cells↗

PubMed2004

Assessing informatics students' satisfaction with a web-based courseware system.

This study assessed health informatics student satisfaction with two subsequent versions of Prometheus, a web-based courseware system. Prometheus versions 4 and 5 were assessed to gauge the effect of modifications to improve the usability of the system. The Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS, version 7.0) was administered at the end of fall semester 2001 (in which Prometheus version 4 was used) and again at the end of Spring 2002 (in which Prometheus version 5 was used). QUIS contains measures of user satisfaction of the overall system and 11 specific dimensions, including screen, terminology and system information, learning, system capabilities, manuals and online help, multimedia, and teleconferencing. In general, students had favorable judgments of Prometheus, and their satisfaction level remained relatively stable across the two versions. However, usability enhancements incorporated into version 5 produced no significant differences in student satisfaction ratings. The results of this study provide a benchmark for comparing the relative usability of alternative courseware systems and demonstrate the utility of user satisfaction surveys for assessing and improving courseware systems. With increases in the need for compliance education and the education of clinicians with 'just in time knowledge', courseware systems will become an integral part of the clinical information systems, increasing the importance of usability studies such as this one.

Adult↗