Barriers to the clinical implementation of compositionality

BACKGROUND Compositional mechanisms for the entry of clinically relevant controlled vocabularies have been suggested as a possible solution to providing adequate descriptive precision while keeping term vocabulary redundancy under control. As of yet, there are no widely accepted term navigators that allow physicians to enter problem lists utilizing controlled vocabularies with compositionality. METHODS We report on the results of a usability trial of 5 physicians using our most recent attempt at developing the Mayo Problem List Manager. We tested the implementation of an automated term composition, and hierarchical term dissection. RESULTS Participants found acceptable terms 96% of the time and found automated term composition helpful in 85% of the case scenarios. There was significant confusion about the terminology used to describe compositional elements (kernel concepts, modifiers, and qualifiers) however participants used the functions appropriately. Speed of entry was universally stated as the limiting factor. CONCLUSIONS The variety of methods that our participants used to enter terms highlights the need for multiple ways to accomplish the task of data entry. Successful implementation of user directed compositionality could be accomplished with further improvement of the user interface and the underlying terminology.