Is Your EHR Nudging You?

The following quote highlights the vital role of decision-making in health care outcomes and how the design of information in health information technologies (HIT) influences those decisions and the resulting clinician behaviors:

Information design is an important component of electronic health records (EHRs); one design approach in EHRs to alter clinician behavior is nudging.

Beyond health care, cognitively oriented nudges have been used in marketing for years. More recently, however, marketers are using behaviorally oriented approaches to nudging.²  An example of a marketing nudge to alter consumer behavior is changing the choice environment in grocery stores by putting fresh fruit on brightly lit tables, making the fruit easier to see, more appealing, and simpler to reach.³  By contrast, an action such as banning junk food—removing an option entirely to alter behavior—is not a nudge.³  This is because a “behavioral nudge is a minor change in framing choice...