Usability evaluation of family physicians' interaction with the Comorbidity Ontological Modeling and ExecuTion System (COMET).

Objective: To assess how well the COMET system meets the functional goals and usability needs of family physicians (FP) for the management of patients who have comorbid chronic heart failure (CHF) and atrial fibrillation (AF).

Design: Nonexperimental post-interaction Think Aloud Sessions and survey involving Likert scale questionnaires.

Participants: Licensed Family Physicians in Nova Scotia.

Intervention: A clinical decision support tool called "COMET - Co-morbidity Ontological Modeling & ExecuTion". COMET's main purpose is to provide evidence-based recommendations for the management of patients with co-morbid CHF-AF in a family practice setting.

Results: Our study suggested that although the participant family physicians are potential users of the clinical decision support software like COMET, the most common usability problems encountered are related to inadequate information content, navigation, and time and effort for data entry. We recommend that a field usability testing of a CDSS using think aloud protocols in conjunction with surveys is an effective method to uncover usability problems.