1. User interface design is as much a blend of art and science as is the practice of medicine itself. Due simply to substantial physical differences between the physician's desktop and portable workstations (e.g., size of the video screen, ease of use of the pointing device, data transmission speed of the unit's link to the network, etc.), the all-important user interfaces of these two stations will likely also have substantial differences.

Yet, a standard user interface across many different hardware platforms will be essential to increasing physician acceptance of computers and decreasing training requirements. How would you solve this paradox?

That is, if you could design your own physician workstation user interface, how would it look? What would it be capable of doing, and how would you access each of its functions? To what degree does the design of the interface depend on specific hardware? How can the differences in the desktop's and portable's interfaces be minimized or eliminated?

Is this even a feasible goal with current technology?