Synthesis of Principles and Lessons Learned

Abstract

Several design principles can now be more easily recognized The original PACE design had a rich and interactive software system that involved the users extensively to ascertain their needs and fine-tune their specific interests. It is extremely difficult, however, to take full advantage of such a dynamic interactive software “front end,” in the present health care environment (Ball & Douglas, 1995). Users today rarely have the time to interact, and they preferred the system to be responsive in terms of a guess at what their needs would be. They preferred that the system produce a highly accurate first guess that was most often correct, requiring them only to fine-tune it to a specific patient’s needs (Metzger & Teich, 1995). As a result, the investment in the capacity to explore, tune, and permit the user to reflect on a wide variety of intellectual interests represented an academic orientation that had less applicability in the actual clinical practice setting.