Human-centered design of team health IT for pediatric trauma care transitions

As problems of acceptance, usability and workflow integration continue to emerge with health information technologies (IT), it is critical to incorporate human factors and ergonomics (HFE) methods and design principles. Human-centered design (HCD) provides an approach to integrate HFE and produce usable technologies. However, HCD has been rarely used for designing team health IT, even though team-based care is expanding.

To describe the HCD process used to develop a usable team health IT (T³ or Teamwork Transition Technology) that provides cognitive support to pediatric trauma care teams during transitions from the emergency department to the operating room and the pediatric intensive care unit.

The HCD process included seven steps in three phases of analysis, design activities and feedback.

The HCD process involved multiple perspectives and clinical roles that were engaged in inter-related activities, leading to design requirements, i.e., goals for the technology, a set of 47 information elements, and a list of HFE design principles applied to T³. Results of the evaluation showed a high usability score for T³.

HFE can be integrated in the HCD process through a range of methods and design principles. That design process can produce a usable technology that provides cognitive support to a large diverse team involved in pediatric trauma care transitions. Future research should continue to focus on HFE-based design of team health IT.