2 May 2012 - Queen Mary, University of London
Technology Health and Society seminar: “Designing safer medical devices”
Internal seminar at QMUL
Abstracts
1. Designing better software to manage error by Prof. Harold Thimbleby, Swansea University
Good people work in healthcare. When patient harm occurs, then one of these good people must have gone bad. A more mature view is that “the system” allowed the error, and one should try to design out the error. Yet if error has been designed out, and error still occurs (as it will), then this must again be the fault of the human at the sharp end! A more mature view is that you do not want to design out error, you want to manage error to reduce harm. This seminar shows how device design, and in particular interactive system design (computers and devices), conspires to induce error and hide causes of error. We will show that better design (often simple changes to software) can reduce harm significantly.
2. Modelling user behaviour and the prevention of user error with medical devices by Dr. Paul Curzon, QMUL
Mistakes people make using medical devices such as infusion pumps can be systematic. They can arise as a result of poor human-computer system design. In this situation just blaming the person for making the mistake is not helpful if the aim is to avoid future mistakes: the system should instead be redesigned. We will overview what we mean by systematic behaviour in this context and argue that such behaviour can be modelled in logic. The model can then be used to reason mathematically about the possible consequences of a person behaving in such a plausible way when operating a device. This kind of analysis can highlight and check the appropriateness of device design changes or user strategies that might be followed to avoid the problems.
In this workshop, we hope to:
Who should attend:
12 August 2011 - Swansea
Visit the Swansea workshop website.
This summer workshop is a one day event, free of charge. To find out more or to register, please email Karen Li, K.Y.Li@karenyli.me or Yunqiu.Li@Swansea.ac.uk
“In this workshop, we hope to:
Please also see our page on working with Manufacturers.
“We have been learning from the experiences of medical device developers. Feedback has identified the need for support across a number of themes including collaborative and interdisciplinary working practices, understanding the skills and background of users, justification of user centred techniques and improvements relating to the clarity and brevity of guidance. We aim to provide practical and easily adoptable material to address these challenges and will be learning about what works and what doesn't work in practice. Examples include the provision of scenarios, use cases, design patterns, automated checking routines and checklists regarding commonly used features. We will be outlining some of this during our manufacturer workshop to be held in UCL on the 11th and 12th of July 2011.”
The Summer Workshop for Medical Device Developers and Manufacturers was held at UCL in the Wilkins Haldane Room on 11th and 12th July 2011. You can download the workshop programme and instructions for delegates (including travel information).
Please also see our page on working with Manufacturers.
13 June 2011 - CHI+MED scientists ran the 1st International Workshop on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems for Medicine and Health Care EICS4Med 2011 at the the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS) in Pisa, Italy on 13 June 2011. The workshop proceedings are now available online.