Rapid Review of the Application of Usability Techniques in Medical Equipment

The application of usability techniques in health care establishments has the potential to identify, analyze and implement improvements to reduce adverse events and increase patient safety and reliability in technological health processes. Due to the increase in technologies in health care establishments and its use in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of various diseases, the Health Technology Management process consists of an extremely effective approach to clinical engineering. A rapid review of the usability techniques application in medical equipment was performed to look for the evidence available in the literature and thereby contribute to developers, manufacturers, health professionals, technology managers and other actors in the technological process of applying usability concepts in medical equipment. The research was performed through searches in scientific databases. A total of 31 studies were selected in which various usability techniques were applied, the most frequent being questionnaires and usability tests. The medical equipment in which they were most studied were infusion pumps, pulmonary ventilator and defibrillator. With this research it was possible to present main studies current panorama and to show the importance of applying usability techniques in medical equipment, to demonstrate the relevance of bringing the clinical and technical area closer in the processes involving health technologies, in addition to discuss the main ones considerations of the implementations of the techniques in order to reduce the risks of using the technologies in the health units and thereby improve patient safety.