USING MEDICAL DEVICE LOGS FOR
IMPROVING MEDICAL DEVICE DESIGN
User interfaces that employ
the same display and buttons may look the same but can work very differently
depending on exactly how they are implemented. In healthcare, it is critical
that interfaces that look the same are the same. Hospitals typically have many
types of visually similar infusion pumps, but with different software versions
and variation between pump behavior, and this may lead to unexpected adverse
events. For example, when entering drug doses into infusion pumps different
results may arise when pushing identical sequences of buttons. These
differences arise as a result of subtle implementation differences and may lead
to large errors users do not notice. Previous work has explored different
implementations of a 5-key interface for entering numbers using a new analysis
technique, Differential Formal Analysis, where predictions relating to the
distribution of errors in terms of the size of the error (out by 10, out by 100
and so on) can be made. The analysis described in the paperextends this work
with models of use based on many hours of actual clinical use data.
Specifically, we draw on 1,362 days of use of number entry systems, from 19
infusion pumps over a 3 year period in a UK hospital. The paper also
suggests some improvements to medical device logs, which will help further
evidence-based improvement to medical device safety.
Published in:
Date of
Conference:
9-11 Sept. 2013
Page(s):
56 - 65
INSPEC Accession
Number:
13971646
Conference
Location :
Philadelphia, PA
Digital Object
Identifier :
Publisher:
IEEE
