Designing for Risk Assessment Systems for Patient Triage in Primary Health Care: A Literature Review

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Systems Engineering
• Human Factors Research
• Ergonomics in Medicine

Background:

• Literature review of original journal papers published between 2011 and 2015.
• Focuses on human factors and ergonomics in risk assessment systems for primary health care patient triage.
• Addresses complexity, singularity, and danger in healthcare settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• Systematic literature review.
• Identifies, analyzes, and interprets evidence on human factors and ergonomics.
• Aims to improve the design of tools, devices, and work processes for healthcare risk assessment.

Main Methods:

• Electronic search across 7 bibliographic databases (health sciences, engineering, computer sciences).
• Evaluation of primary study quality and suitability.
• Classification of selected papers based on 4 outcome classes.

Main Results:

• Initial search yielded 1845 papers.
• 16 papers were selected after applying inclusion/exclusion criteria and quality assessment.
• Data extraction was performed on the selected studies.

Conclusions:

• Understanding real work performance is crucial but underexplored in healthcare risk assessment design.
• Current research is highly specific and limited in scope.
• Focus remains predominantly on the development of risk assessment tools.