In this piece, Wu explains her point of view on the hazards of a Design Review.  The answer, she says, is to ensure that management and team members are committed to the goals of the process. 

Lynde Kintner, design researcher, shares her reactions to a recent presentation on the recently released Human Factors Standard HE 75.

Meredith DeZutter reports on a recent visit to an FDA workshop on Home Medical Devices.

A year ago I was told that I needed to read and understand 13 (out of 67) company “Standard Operating Procedures” (SOPs).  Until that time, I had no comprehension of what an SOP was, and after I read through the towering stack, I still couldn’t figure out what they were, or why it was so important that I become familiar with them.  Let me rephrase this: it took me 3 valuable hours to read materials that I didn’t understand, but that were in theory supposed to help me do a better job as Director of Design Research.  As I began speaking to my colleagues across the company – those in Design, Manufacturing and Quality, for example, I learned that they too found them difficult to understand and follow.   Clearly, something had to change.

To continue a theme that we’ve posted about in the past, here’s another example of data visualization I came across.  In this information graphic, created by Tommy McCall and David Bassett for the Technology Review, an overview of the sources and utilization of energy in the United States is shown.  Did you know that 45% of energy generated is wasted? 

About a month ago, I posted an article here about a little known and little-applied field of engineering called tribology – the study of interacting surfaces in relative motion. It’s a subject that I studied in college, and I thought it would be interesting to write about it. If you missed that post, you can see it here. 

Whether one is aiming for efficiency gains, safety improvements, a better patient experience, or better clinical outcomes, employing a human centered design approach acknowledges that the building blocks of any healthcare system are its people; patients, physicians, nurses, technicians, administrators, and others. It embraces the variability and complexity of humans, as individuals and en masse. It exposes and defines the tolerance bands that will allow people to operate effectively in situ rather than in a standard operating procedure or process flow diagram. Without a fundamental understanding of these critical variables, any system design is destined for challenges, and at worst, failure.

In healthcare systems—process or product—a human centered design approach prioritizes usability and practical adoption for optimal outcome. Introducing change in complex systems is rarely easy. Stakeholders need to be participants in the co-development process if they are to be active champions of the implementation. Top down recommendations are often too general to be useful or too specific to account for the unique attributes of systems. And approaches that are derivatives of manufacturing practices, while they may have some adaptable elements, often become unwieldy, cold, and impractical when applied to the nexus of highly-trained professionals and unique patient presentations that characterize most provider environments.

As the healthcare industry is forced to deal with its significant challenges in the coming decade, the fact that it is predominantly an industry of people will spawn widespread adoption and adaptation of human factors design expertise. The leaders have already begun.

Michael J. Woods Institute Announced for Rhode Island's Kent Hospital

I recently had the opportunity to deliver a presentation at the Industrial Design Society of America's International Conference in Miami, along with my colleague Aidan Petrie. In our preparation for this presentation, I was reminded again about the differences in individual communication styles, and the importance of considering those other than one's own. As an engineer, my "default" is to create presentations by taking a basic outline and converting it to bullet points on a series of slides. This method, familiar to everyone, probably describes 90% of all the presentations I have both created and seen throughout my career. Suddenly, along with Aidan I was to present to a big roomful of design professionals about designing in the medical field. To help prepare the presentation, we enlisted two of Ximedica’s human factors design professionals. Much to my horror, the first draft didn't include a single bullet point. We went back and forth and eventually reached a compromise—text and strong visuals, but no bullets. In the end, it was the most beautiful, visually appealing presentation that I have been involved with. I still don't understand completely, but I realized again the importance of considering a range of communication styles and how much there is to learn from people with different backgrounds.