Information for practitioners
CHI+MED (Computer-Human Interaction in Medicine) is a six-year project, funded by an EPSRC programme grant, which aims to make medical devices safer. We are working with the different groups of people involved in the design, purchase and use of these devices to learn from their experiences. Understanding more about the different factors (across the areas of human cognition, interactive design, computer science) that have an impact on designing and using safer products will help us develop knowledge and advice that will be applicable to a wide range of devices, and people.
Although the ultimate aim of the CHI+MED project is to help patients by making medical devices safer in the long term the project will help practitioners and healthcare professionals in the medium term in the following ways.
- We are developing leaflets for specific medical devices that will be used in the home, outlining mistakes that can be easily made and ways of reducing the risk of making them.
- We will help medical trainers by providing materials to use in courses as well as up to date incident reports with advice on effective strategies doctors and nurses can use to help them avoid making such mistakes.
- We will help procurement staff by providing, for example, incident reports, guidance and tools to help identify what to look for to improve safety.
We will also evaluate the effectiveness of our approaches in order to determine the best ways to help. In addition we will be developing new forms of engagement and using this to monitor how effectively we are working with different groups.