USABILITY OF THE MEDICAL DEVICE AMONG GENERAL PHYSICIANS AND SPECIALISTS - A STUDY IN CONTEXT TO INDIAN HEALTHCARE SCENARIO

Usability engineering is a scientific discipline that studies how people interact with systems. Human factors engineers seek to optimize human performance by designing systems to match the cognitive and physical capabilities and limitations of users. Usability aspects of the medical device are crucial in ensuring efficacy of the medical care. For companies designing and manufacturing medical devices, poor usability is literally a matter of life or death. More than a third of medical device incidents involve usability issues and, on average, 195,000 people die in American hospitals annually because of medical errors. While not all of those cases are attributable to specific user interface design problems, increasingly complex user interfaces are unquestionably a part of the problem. This paper presents a case study of evaluating usability aspects of a medical device among general physicians and specialists.