Recuperação da Informação: estudo da usabilidade na base de dados Public Medical (PUBMED)

Abstract

It investigates the understanding that resident doctors have about the process of information retrieval on the basis of Public Medical (PubMed) data, taking into consideration the aspects of usability in human-computer interaction, the resources available and the level of user satisfaction in searching process. The theoretical framework used for this research relates the concepts of information and information systems for the healthcare, and then addresses the Information Retrieval systems and databases, entering the field of information architecture for evaluating the usability of these sources information. The methodological approach includes exploratory research whose first phase consisted of the heuristic evaluation of the PubMed database interface, using the guidelines proposed by Nielsen and Tahir (2002). The results of this analysis show that although these guidelines have been designed to build homepage, thirty-eight of them are suited to the PubMed interface. Therefore, it is inferred that these guidelines can be used for heuristic evaluation of databases focused on the area of Health regarding the usability of this database, it was observed that the interface has a well-structured architecture, is friendly and objective, and present numerous possibilities for search and retrieval of information. The second phase of empirical study took place through the application of prospective usability testing to measure user satisfaction database. These tests were done using a semi-structured questionnaire administered to resident doctors specialty of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Walter Cantídio the Federal University of Ceará, totaling 36% of participants. The results of this step show a good performance and a good user satisfaction PubMed regarding the usability of the database, considering that enables them to achieve their research goals with real effectiveness and efficiency, yet they do not know all the resources available to search and retrieval of information offered by this database.