Safety, Effectiveness, and Design in Healthcare

Just over a year ago, an article appeared on Medium titled "How Bad UX Killed Jenny", discussing how an error associated with a software UI resulted in the healthcare system completely failing a patient.

Unfortunately, the realities of the event the article describes are a bit more complicated than it leads the reader to believe - Bad UX didn't really kill Jenny, it was the healthcare system. But don't panic, a lot of very clever people are working very hard to prevent these things from happening in the future.

This talk will give an overview of Usability, how it pertains to designing for the healthcare system (specifically medical devices) and why your next trip to the hospital probably won't kill you, all from the perspective of a medical device design engineer with a penchant for Human/User/Patient-centred design processes and a dislike of traditional engineering thinking.

About the speaker, Jeremy Kooyman

Jeremy is a Medical Device Design Engineer with one of the many Cambridge-Cluster design consultancies. His interests include medical robotics, drug delivery devices, and trying to figure out why everyone wants iPhone apps for their medical products. When he's not being an engineer, he's probably climbing something, riding a bike, or ignoring his blog.

Sponsors and thanks

We are very grateful to Microsoft Research Cambridge for hosting this event and providing nibbles and drinks.

We plan to head to the Salisbury Arms pub for a beer or two afterwards, to continue the conversations. We're grateful to Cambridge Consultants, who have offered to sponsor pizza at the pub.