Here’s a design approach that I really, really dislike: the scrolling wheel that is often used for number entry in iOS apps:
I find that the scrolling wheel makes it very tiresome to enter numbers, and much prefer apps that offer a number pad, or another way to touch the number you need. (Or at least decrease the number at hand in sensible increments.)
You may think I’m being too picky, but I really think our ability to leverage technology will hinge in part on these apps and devices being very usable.
And that usability has to be considered for everyone involved: patients, caregivers, and clinicians.
Why am I looking at an app to enter blood pressure?
Let me start by saying that ideally nobody should be entering vitals data manually. (Not me, not the patient, not the caregivers, not the assisted-living facility staff.)
Instead, we should all be surrounded by BP machines that easily send their data to some computerized system, and said system should then be able to display and share the data without too much hassle.
But, we don’t yet live in this world, to my frequent mild sorrow. This means that it’s still a major hassle to have regular people track what is probably the number one most useful data for us in internal medicine and geriatrics: blood pressure (BP) & pulse.
Why is BP and pulse data so useful, so often?
To begin with, we need this data when people are feeling unwell, as it helps us assess how serious things might be.
And of course, even when people aren’t acutely ill, we often need this data. That’s because most of our patients are either:
- Taking medication that affects BP and pulse (like cardiovascular meds, but many others affect as well)
- Living with a chronic condition that can affect BP and pulse (such as a-fib)
- All the above
As we know, the occasional office-based measurement is a lousy way to ascertain usual BP (which is relevant for chronic meds), and may not capture episodic disturbances.
