Empathetic and Emotive Design Heuristics: Preliminary Results of Their Application to Evaluating Survey User Interfaces.

Empathetic and emotive design is becoming increasingly important in the digital age. In this research we describe the results of a combined cognitive walkthrough and heuristic evaluation using newly developed, empirically derived empathy or emotive design heuristics. We applied the heuristics to the evaluation of four commonly used survey platforms. Our preliminary findings revealed that the heuristics performed effectively in scoring survey platforms on their level of empathy. Survey platforms that are highly empathetic were scored highest.

Integrating Human Patterns of Qualitative Coding with Machine Learning: A Pilot Study Involving Technology-Induced Error Incident Reports.

The objective of this research was to develop a reproducible method of integrating human patterns of qualitative coding with machine learning. The application of qualitative codes from the technology-induced error and safety literatures to the analysis of incident reports was done successfully, helping to identify the factors that lead to an error as well as the errors themselves. The method described in this paper may provide additional insights into understanding technology-induced errors.

Do Health Technology Safety Issues Vary by Vendor?

There is a need to determine the relative similarity and differences in safety issues across specific types of software and medical devices in order to develop standardized solutions that can be used across these technologies. Over the past several years, health informatics researchers have identified differing types of technology-induced errors or safety issues. This work has led to a literature that has been effective in identifying varying technology-induced errors. Less effort has been made in attempting to understand if there are common types of safety issues and outcomes across vendors for specific types of technology such as electronic health records (EHRs). Our findings demonstrate that some safety issues are common across the same type of software. The findings suggest there is a need to develop standardized approaches to managing technology-induced errors.

Complexity and Health Technology Safety.

In many ways health technology safety has improved significantly over the past few decades. Yet, we still have examples of incidents where safety of health technology systems of care have led to possible and actual safety incidents. In this paper we examine the complexity of errors in an increasingly complex and digitized system of care. Although safety incidents are decreasing over time due to improvements in the tools used to support care, they still occur. Simple safety incidents prevailed in the 2005. Today, incident reports suggest complexity has emerged as an important issue that needs to be addressed in order to make further healthcare industry safety gains.