In my opinion, there should be a hotkey that you can assign to toggle between your allies like you do monsters. That way if you are a monk or whatever, if you see an ally right next to you who is hurting badly, you could just auto-target that player and heal. Or you could constantly be toggling between players to check health. Being forced to click their name in the list or clicking the character on the map is clunky at best.
Maybe there is this option and I missed it?
Targeting Players for Healing
Zfactor
Elythor
Or you can simply assign hotkeys for your party members. Its in the options menu.
Taphoo
Being a lousy typist, it is actually faster for me to click on the party member's name - I have to keep an eye on that box anyway to track who is dying fastest...