A Rising Trend in Online End-User Help for Medical Devices

I recently completed a project to develop an entirely new medical device for a major player in the industry - Beckman Coulter, Inc. In the development for user requirements for the instrument, my team members and I touched upon the topic of end user documentation to support its operation.

As a technical writer of more than ten years in both hardware and software, I chimed in with a review of past history in user guide documentation. Up until the last several years, it sufficed to provide medical device users with a printed manual to accompany the instrument. However, in recent years we've seen an older generation of medical device technicians either retiring or getting laid off due to the high pay they've been receiving in the last several decades.

What the New Operators Are Using

This drop-off has created an increased demand for medical technicians. Their replacements are culled from a younger generation raised on cell phones and other technology that has provided them with instant gratification. Needless to say, a 500-page PDF document or printed manual won't make them happy.

A Solution for Both Demographics

After polling some major clients as to what they could best work with, my development team and I found on the one hand we had the older users who were used to having printed manuals readily at their disposal to which to refer. On the other hand we had younger users who were weaned on reading text from a computer screen. In discussing this dichotomy in user types, we arrived at a solution that nearly simultaneously answered the needs of both the older medical device operators and the younger ones.

Not Like Other User Help File Contents

When invoking help on many other software-driven packages, the help that shows up delivers the entire help file content. Sure, it's readily available, but the user must slog through the content until they get to what they need - if they indeed find it at all. What's more, that help is only available through a search of the entire help content repository.

Context-Sensitive User Help

We decided to implement a form of user documentation that we labeled "context-sensitive user help". Because the instrument was driven by software residing on an attached laptop PC using a keyboard and mouse, our instrument end user help file was to reside on the PC also. As the user pages from screen to screen while operating the device, they would be able to access help by clicking on a help icon (question mark).

Upon clicking the icon, on-screen user help would immediately appear - but with one major difference. The help available would only be relevant to the activities and features available on the active screen - thus "context-sensitive user help".

Delivered in this manner, users of either demographic would get only the help they needed.

The younger users would get on-screen help from which they could toggle back and forth − from help screen to device screen. More traditional users could print off the help they needed from the help screen that appeared, minimize that help window, and then operate the instrument while looking back and forth from the printout in their hand to the instrument operation screen on the PC.