Predicting the Usability of Telemedicine Systems in Different Deployments through Modelling and Simulation

The success of telemedicine systems requires sufficiently high productivity, satisfaction and low error rates: in short, usability. However, the costs associated with performing pre-deployment usability studies often make them infeasible. This results in usability problems which may manifest differently in different deployment contexts and cause different levels of inefficiency and discomfort to their users, potentially even leading to errors which may threaten patients' lives. This paper shows by means of examples how experimentation with different workloads, user profiles and system characteristics can suggest problems that may arise in deploying a telemedicine system into new contexts. Such approaches might support the roll-out of large telemedicine implementations, as the one currently planned in the UK.