The common user interface (CUI), which is targeted at healthcare application providers and institutions, is the result of more than two years’ collaboration between Microsoft and the National Health Service (NHS) in England. The initial release of the CUI has created guidance and tools for a common look and feel for patient-critical functions, intended to increase patient safety and clinician effectiveness and reduce training and support costs, among other benefits.
The CUI means NHS doctors can spend more time focusing on providing optimal care to their patients and less time worrying about searching for the right way to enter information into the system. The CUI provides both platform-independent guidance for designing clinical interfaces that can be implemented on any software technology, as well as a reference implementation on the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework.
Tim Smokoff, general manager of worldwide health for the worldwide public sector at Microsoft, said: The Microsoft Health Common User Interface will help developers building healthcare applications ensure a higher level of quality control through a common look and feel to reduce the margin for error and save lives in the process.
