A project led by Jeremy Opie at University College London.

Many novel health technologies are developed without sufficient understanding of the needs, values and practices of the intended users. Focusing on the engineering challenges, human factors work is often considered as an afterthought, if at all. However, without a good understanding of the users, the engineering often solves the “wrong” problem, or misses valuable opportunities to create greater impact. Early consideration of users and mixed methods research approaches can yield substantial insights and impact.

The aim of this project is to provide FAST engineers with human factors resources and mixed method approaches to facilitate understanding the needs of healthcare workers and assist with identifying barriers end users face in a given context. These resources will include videos to support working with healthcare workers throughout the entire length of projects, and supporting documentation providing more detail on each topic.

This work and its findings are presented in a video by the Project Investigator here: