Panel – Challenges in Supporting the Design of Products for Healthcare: The Human Factors Consultant’s Perspective

This panel will provide a forum for discussing typical challenges that arise for human factors consulting practices when focused on designing products for healthcare, either medical devices, healthcare software, or related materials. In particular we will address questions about what, if anything, is different about consulting on healthcare products as opposed to the human factors of other types of systems. We have assembled a panel of well-experienced human factors engineering consultants, each with more than 25 years of experience. They all have considerable experience with healthcare products. Drawing upon that experience we will engage the audience with opportunities to pose questions to the panelists about the challenges they have faced in the healthcare product arena and how they have dealt with those challenges. The moderator will seed the discussion with some provocative questions about what makes healthcare products different, what reasonable or unreasonable expectations clients often have, and what questions these consultants pose to their clients when trying to determine product design challenges and the strategies for best addressing those challenges.