Effectiveness of interruptive alerts in increasing application functionality utilization: A controlled trial

Medical applications frequently contain a wide range of functionalities. Users are often unaware of all of the functionalities available. More effective ways of delivering information about available functionalities to the users are needed.We conducted a pseudo-randomized controlled trial to determine whether interruptive alerts will increase utilization of several functionalities by the users of the Pre-Admission Medication List (PAML) Builder application at two academic medical centers. In a log-linear model, alerts increased total utilization of the promoted functionalities per PAML built by 70% compared to the controls at the site level (p < 0.0001). At the user level, frequency of utilization of the PAML Builder functionalities by individual users increased by 0.03 for every extra alert shown to the user (p < 0.0001).Alerts led to a nearly 2-fold increase in utilization of the promoted functionalities. Interruptive alerts are an effective method of delivering information about application functionalities to users.