Health Care Design

This issue of the Research Digest focuses on health care human factors literature and draws attention to design factors that can have a significant impact on how users perceive and perform various health care tasks.

Use color and labeling wisely: Medication overdose is a major patient safety hazard, especially with the increasing reliance on over-the-counter medications. For example, acetaminophen overdose is considered the leading cause of liver failure in the United States; medication package labeling has been identified as playing an important role in such overdoses. Endestad, Wortinger, Madsen, and Hortemo (2016) found that when two medication packages that contain the same ingredient have different package coloring, users conclude that the packages contain two different ingredients, with elderly users making more erroneous conclusions than young users. Highlighting and placing the name of the active ingredient in the upper right-hand corner of the medication package can help patients realize that two medications can have the same ingredient and has the potential to reduce the risk of unintentional overdose.

Implement a do-verify checklist: Consider employing a do-verify checklist (versus a to-do checklist) during complex surgical procedures involving highly trained teams performing tasks that do not have an absolute step-by-step protocol adherence. A do-verify checklist has the potential to enhance collaborative task performance by promoting assertiveness and comfort level within teams, forcing explicit verbalization of expectations of team members about complications or equipment needs, reducing the cognitive effort involved in deciphering the thought process of a team member, and increasing shared situation awareness (McLaughlin, Ward, & Keene, 2016).

Design the right form factor: Auto-injectors, which help in the quick administration of epinephrine in the event of a life-threatening allergic reaction, have been in the news lately. The overall design of such a device – including the drug delivery mechanism and the steps of activating, positioning, and holding the auto-injector during drug administration – should be such that it facilitates effective drug delivery. An elliptical form factor is considered superior to the cylindrical and the prismatic form factor with respect to providing maximum axial force, most normal orientation, least forearm muscle grip effort, and highest grip efficiency during drug delivery (Barbir, Janelli, Lin, & Dennerlein, 2016). Elliptical designs also provide the least amount of orientation variability and are liked the most by users.

Use persuasive messages: Employing persuasive, instructional text that evokes personal health concerns and increases the confidence of the audience by providing succinct information about procedures to be carried out can help promote public health, such as increased adherence to cancer screenings and mammograms (Schneider, Feufel, & Berkel, 2011).

Know your audience: Personal health records are burgeoning and have the potential to help patients and providers collaborate to manage chronic ailments and prevent the onset of diseases. To make these portals more accessible to patients, it is important to design such systems while considering the health literacy, cognitive, and numeracy levels of health consumers. Eliminating the use of highly technical and medical terms, using consistent labeling, and making data interpretation and information access easy are all key to designing a usable and effective personal health record (Czaja et al., 2015).