In March I presented a poster as part of the inaugural Symposium on Human Factors & Ergonomics in Health Care: Briding the Gap. The conference covered three tracks: Medical Devices, Healthcare Provider Safety, and Healthcare Information Technology. I focused on a cross-over area - designing medical devices with the safety of healthcare providers in mind. While we are always concerned with protecting patients from harm; it is actually healthcare providers who have a higher frequency of interaction with medical devices.
The poster presented a three-tiered methodology that I have developed to designing safe devices, and drew from a presentation I gave last year on safe products & evidence-based design. The methodology addresses three specific areas of human-device research and design:
- Intrinsic Safety - Focused on the immediate/initial use of the device
- Ergonomic Safety - Focused on repetitive and long-term use
- Usable Safety - Focused on minimizing opportunities for incorrect use
These principles are discussed int he context of two medical sharps devices designed by Bresslergroup.
You can view the poster as a PDF. Poster design by Keith Fraser.
