The dissemination of clinical practice guidelines over an intranet: an evaluation.

This study compares two clinical practice guideline dissemination systems. It was hypothesized that placing guidelines on an intranet would make this information easier to retrieve. Retrieval time, retrieval accuracy, and ease of use were empirically evaluated. Sixteen clinicians from Kaiser Permanente volunteered to complete tasks that measured these variables. Time values were significantly longer for tasks completed with intranet guidelines (Intranet = 6.7 minutes, Paper = 5.7 minutes). Tasks completed with paper guidelines had a significantly higher percentage of perfect scores than those completed with the intranet (Paper = 85%, Intranet = 59%). There was no significant difference in reported ease of use. Simply placing clinical information on an electronic system does not guarantee that the information will be easier to retrieve. Such information needs to be fully integrated into the clinical decision making process. Computerizing guidelines may provide a necessary initial step toward this goal, but it does not represent the final solution.