Biomedical Test Instruments: Usability, Ergonomics, and Communicability Assessment

Introduction

With the passing of time, the number of people who suffer from diabetes in the world is growing in an exponential way, due to the stress of the daily life, the negative habits in the ingestion of junk food (usually, the term “junk2 refers to the place where the food items whose shelf life is finished end up, but in our case we refer to their composition, such as can be the high level of carbonic hydrates, for instance), the consequences of the chemotherapy and radiotherapy processes, which entail the appearance of the diabetes of the type Melitus II, etc. Once its presence has been detected, the doctors, will advise the use of the blood glucose meter for its daily control (Brown & Brown, 2013; El-Gayar, et al. 2013). In relation to the obtained results in the measurement of sugar, the patient will have to take the pertinent drugs. Traditionally, it is an area multidisciplinary transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary for the global research (e.g., Fischer, 1991; Parker, Doyle, & Peppas, 2001; Preuveneers, & Berbers, 2008; Tatara, et al., 2010) and today, it is special for telemedicine using Internet and new devices, hardware, software, etc., for example (Woodward, Istepanian, & Richards, 2001; Mamykina, Mynatt, & Kaufman, 2006; Jurik, & Weaver, 2008; Das, & Alsos, 2008).

Now the tools for the measurement of glucose, that is, the blood glucose meters, have been at the core of two terms at the moment of carrying out the usability and usefulness test (Nielsen, 1993; Barnum, 2002). Two words which we find in the graphic made by Nielsen in the 90s (Nielsen, 1993; Nielsen & Mack, 1994), where inside the system acceptability, we have a bifurcation between social acceptability and practical acceptability (Figure 1). In the former its components are not defined. In our case of study, we would include the publicity factors of the instrument, whether it is with commercial purposes or not, the positive comments of the users of the different types of measurers (specialized websites, blogs, oral communication, etc.) and the interpretation of the statistic data of the manufacturers and of the public, private and hybrid health institutions who control the patients who use these devices. In the second bifurcation, we have two fundamental aspects for the current study; one derives from the word usefulness and the other from usability. The first term includes the cost factor, which in our case is equal to zero, especially in the European public health system, until the second decade of the new millennium. These instruments (Figure 2) are distributed for free among the patients, thanks to the local, regional or state wide health system. The compatibility in our case may refer to the possibility of incorporating the data obtained through the blood glucose meter in the computer, in order to have a clinical record of the evolution of the measurements, or send the information to the specialist physician, for instance.

Figure 1.

Usability and the system acceptability

Usability, Communicability, And Ergonomics

In our universe of study, very few users of those instruments carry out the formerly described operations, since they do not have enough skills in the use of the computers in an autonomous way. Consequently, the compatibility option does not occupy a first or second category in the rank of the priorities. In contrast, the usability of the system is present even in the websites that promote other devices (www.niprodiagnostics.com/diabetes_resources), as can be seen in the following listing of ten questions: