Critical Communication and Coordination Requirements of Clinical Activities

Issue
Medical applications are designed using generic software engineering methods, which often do not meet the requirements of the clinical domain, especially as related to safety and reliability. Growing evidence shows that adverse events are related to communication and coordination breakdowns, and poor application design. Thus, there is a need for new design methods tailored to the clinical domain, so that clinical applications become a safer presence in healthcare. In this respect, communication and coordination process are crucial considerations. We want to leverage knowledge about these processes to develop a design methodology that will address the special requirements of the clinical domain.

Methods
Workflow and task analyses are conducted in order to gain understanding of the process and to inform the development of the observational data collection framework - to operationally define events and conditions of interest for data collection during observations. Subsequently, observations help identify the critical communication and coordination processes and their relevance to safety.

The empirical findings are then used to improve current design strategies and methodologies for medical technology. The suggested techniques are validated through usability lab simulations of system prototypes designed with the new approaches.