A use error taxonomy for improving human-machine interface design in medical devices

Abstract

Use error is one of the leading causes of medical device incidents. It is crucial for all stakeholders to have a unified means to better understand, classify, communicate, and prevent/avoid medical device use errors. In this paper, we present our ongoing work on developing a new use error taxonomy for medical devices that has the potential to enable fine-grained analysis of use errors and their root causes in system design. Our ultimate goal is to create a generic framework that can be used by medical device designers to better identify effective design solutions to mitigating use errors.