Table 1.

Seven areas of contrast in practice between HCI and Health: the poles.

Lesson	Topic	HCI ‘pole’	Health ‘pole’
1	Establishing the state of the art (or what is known already from the literature)	Opportunistic (rarely structured).	Systematic.
2	Lifecycles	Iterative, focusing on fitness for purpose. Stages include: ascertaining user requirements, design, implementation (operationalising design concepts), and evaluation.	Iterative, focusing on impact. Stages include: development, feasibility and piloting, evaluation, and implementation (wide-scale deployment).
3	Requirements and design methods	End users are the primary ‘experts.’ A suite of methods for gathering user requirements and generating design solutions is employed to deliver a tool, application, or system. Emphasis is on creativity and innovation.	Clinicians and other professionals are the primary ‘experts.’ The focus is on the design of an ‘intervention,’ and the design process is encouraged to draw on theory. Emphasis on systematic development is based on ‘mechanisms of action.’
4	Implementation	Precedes evaluation; focuses on developing a computer system.	Follows evaluation; focuses on roll-out across care (or other) systems.
5	Evaluation methodologies and measures	Adapted from many disciplines; focuses on process.	RCT dominates; focuses on effects.
6	Ethics	Practice has historically focused more on individuals’ rights (through consent) than on risk of harm.	Highly regulated; the prevention of adverse events or harm is seen as a priority.
7	Publications	Difficult to publish anything other than basic research. Credible papers are rarely under 6000 words, and often over 10,000 words.	Variety of paper types including case notes, opinion pieces, letters, and research papers. Maximum word count is usually under 4000.

HCI, Human–Computer Interaction; RCT, randomised controlled trial.