Showing the Way to Useful Health IT through Human Factors and Ergonomics

For health IT to benefit health and healthcare, it must be useable by – and useful to – patients and clinicians.  This is precisely where the discipline of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) serves as an essential foundation for the development, implementation, and use of high-quality health information systems and practices.  HFE improves overall performance through study of interactions among humans and other elements of a system.

We recently published a forward-looking article in a special issue of Applied Ergonomics, reviewing key initiatives funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).  In the article, we illustrate how HFE methods and approaches can improve the design, implementation, and use of health IT for clinicians and consumers and identify the work that remains.