Affiliations: Department of Manufacturing Engineering &
Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong
Kong | Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA | School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
WI, USA | Aurora Health Care, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Ben-Tzion Karsh, PhD, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, 1513
University Avenue, Room 3218, Madison, WI 53706-1572, USA. Tel.: +1 608 262
3002; E-mail: bkarsh@engr.wisc.edu
Abstract: Sicker patients with greater care needs are being discharged to
their homes to assume responsibility for their own care with fewer nurses
available to aid them. This situation brings with it a host of human factors
and ergonomic (HFE) concerns, both for the home care nurse and the home
dwelling patient, that can affect quality of care and patient safety. Many of
these concerns are related to the critical home care tasks of information
access, communication, and patient self-monitoring and self-management.
Currently, a variety of health information technologies (HITs) are being
promoted as possible solutions to those problems, but those same technologies
bring with them a new set of HFE concerns. This paper reviews the HFE
considerations for information access, communication, and patients
self-monitoring and self-management, discusses how HIT can potentially mitigate
current problems, and explains how the design and implementation of HIT itself
requires careful HFE attention.
Keywords: Health information technology, home care, human factors, work system
