Touchscreen interaction for healthcare applications

Topicus is a provider of healthcare related applications. Currently all applications are developed for use on regular computers with a monitor, keyboard and mouse. My research focussed on the question if it would be feasible to oer both a regular interface as well as a touchscreen interface to the users. This way the application could still be used like it is used today, but new ways of interaction are added to the application. To answer this question research was performed on touchscreen characteristics and user interface rules which resulted in a proposal on how to offer both interfaces in a single application. To evaluate the research a prototype was developed which was evaluated by use of a heuristic evaluation. The main finding from this research is that it is very well possible to create an application that incorporates both a regular and a touchscreen interface. There are certain drawbacks to this solution but these don not weigh up to the advantages.