The e-health environment is complex. Unlike aviation or space flight it is not a single goal directed activity and while safety is paramount it is tempered by enormous numbers of patients and pathologies, the ever present likelihood of adverse outcomes from any intervention, the impact of individual human variation, intricate biological and chemical processes and on it goes.  Add to this computing and its steady advance into more complex areas of human intellectual engineering and you have a recipe for error and adverse outcomes. This site examines analogies with non-clinical design process errors, anecdotal observations and reviews recent human factor research to suggest future health informatics research directions in applying human factors and systems designs through encouraging standardised clinical interface development based on evidence and analysis of errors as well as to suggest the need for greater uses of standardised interfaces across vendors.

All e-health developments are a web of incredible complexity – the interweaving of people,  systems and knowledge. The complexity we enter into in managing sources of error impacts substantially in many different areas of human endeavour:

• Computer Sciences – graphics, operating systems, programming languages.
• Systems design and Development
• Communication Theory
• Graphic and Industrial design
• Linguistics
• The Social Sciences and Cognitive Psychology
• Human factors including Physiology and Anatomy
• Engineering

There are a multitude of points of interaction in all these areas where design may be critical including graphical presentation,  icon design and placement,  standardisation of terminologies and screen actions,  physical environment, interface tool design, warnings and alerts.

We will explore all this and more on IT Human Factors. Enjoy my ramblings.