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Impact of Technology
The main goal of the GAPS Center is to use human factors methodologies to identify and design prototypes of software solutions in order to avoid future adverse events in VA Hospitals. Human factors methods, such as usability testing, rapid prototyping, and scenario-based evaluation, have been successfully used in the software and telecommunications industries as well as high-risk industries such as aviation, nuclear power, and space shuttle mission control.
Computerization of tasks and decision support is advocated as an approach to reduce error in medicine. Work in healthcare is increasingly reliant on computerized tools to monitor, alert, report and act on data in high tempo, high hazard care. Analysis of the contribution of computerized devices to adverse events characterizes the interplay of user limitations, human factors and system design issues.1 Task representation and task demands (complexity, coupling, dynamism, uncertainty and risk) significantly affect human-computer performance. When demands placed on the human operator are outstripped by resources that can be brought to bear on the situation (equipment, procedures, selection, and training), workers adapt in predictable ways by trading accuracy for speed, reducing performance criteria, shedding tasks, deferring tasks and recruiting new resources.2,3 Interface designs, mismatched for the pace of the situation, can be identified when operators use these adaptations in order to manage the excessive or misplaced demands.
One of the three missions of the GAPS Center is to evaluate and/or develop tools to support technical work. Using human factors as a theoretical base, the center employs cognitive engineers who direct the analysis of technology in the workplace. We have applied human factors methodologies that allow identification and reduction of unexpected surprises in advance of implementation to health care.
1 Bruley ME. Particular System Issues. National Summit on Medical errors and Patient Safety Research. 9-11-2000
2 O’Hare D. The wheels of misfortune: a taxonomic approach to human factors in accident investigation and analysis in aviation and other complex systems. Ergonomics 200;43:2001 – 2019
3 Woods D. et al in Behind Human Error: Cognitive Systems Computers and Hindsight. CSERIAC Wright Patterson Airforce Base, 1994
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