Usability and Health Care Technology

Andre Kushniruk, BA, BSc, MSc, PhD is a Professor at the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Dr. Kushniruk is also an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Aalborg University, Denmark and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He conducts research in a number of areas including evaluation of the effects of technology in health informatics and improving the usability of healthcare information systems. His work is known internationally and he has published widely in the area of usability engineering in health informatics. His work has involved the development of new methods for designing and evaluating healthcare technologies and systems. He has been involved in bringing usability engineering practices into healthcare for the past twenty years. Dr. Kushniruk has held academic positions at a number of Canadian universities and worked with major hospitals in both Canada, the United States and internationally. He holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Biology, as well as a M.Sc. in Computer Science from McMaster University and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from McGill University. Dr. Kushniruk was elected as a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics in 2009. Elizabeth Borycki, RN, HBScN, MN, PhD is an Associate Professor at the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Dr. Borycki has worked in numerous roles among them a Clinical Informatics Specialist, an Emergency Program Coordinator, Disease Management Specialist, Consultant and Researcher. She teaches systems evaluation, organizational behaviour and change management, quality improvement, research methods and biomedical fundamentals in the undergraduate and graduate programs in health informatics. Her research interests include clinical informatics, clinical simulations, organizational change management, health information system implementations, patient safety, project management and information seeking involving health information systems. Elizabeth has co-authored numerous papers examining the effects of health information system design upon Patient Safety. More recently, she has edited a book on respiratory disease and has edited a book on the human and social impact of information technologies in healthcare. Dr. Borycki holds a PhD from the University of Toronto.