title: Effectiveness of interruptive alerts in increasing application functionality utilization: a controlled trial.
abstract: Medical applications frequently contain a wide range of functionalities. Users are often unaware of all of the functionalities available. More effective ways of delivering information about available functionalities to the users are needed. We conducted a pseudo-randomized controlled trial to determine whether interruptive alerts will increase utilization of several functionalities by the users of the Pre-Admission Medication List (PAML) Builder application at two academic medical centers. In a log-linear model, alerts increased total utilization of the promoted functionalities per PAML built by 70% compared to the controls at the site level (p<0.0001). At the user level, frequency of utilization of the PAML Builder functionalities by individual users increased by 0.03 for every extra alert shown to the user (p<0.0001). Alerts led to a nearly 2-fold increase in utilization of the promoted functionalities. Interruptive alerts are an effective method of delivering information about application functionalities to users.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Informatics Research and Development, Partners HealthCare, Boston, MA, USA. aturchin@partners.org
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Turchin
authors.forename: Oliver D
authors.initials: OD
authors.lastname: James
authors.forename: Eric D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Godlewski
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shubina
authors.forename: Christopher M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Coley
authors.forename: Tejal K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Gandhi
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Broverman
mesh_terms: D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D004360:Drug Therapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D059065:Medication Reconciliation; D014584:User-Computer Interface