Affiliations: [a] ATV Section, Clinic for Anaesthesiology, University of Ulm, Steinhövelstraße 9, 89075 Ulm, Germany | [b] Intensive Care Unit, Kaplan Hospital, P.O. Box 1, Rehovot 76100, Israel
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author.
Note: [1] At the Second European Conference on Engineering and Medicine, held at Stuttgart during April 25–28 this contribution was orally presented as part of the Workshop on New Development in Patient Oriented Medical Information Systems and Workstations organized by O. Wigertz, Linköping. The presentation was subsequently produced as a manuscript to be published in Technology and Health Care.
Abstract: This article constitutes an introduction to the basic tools necessary to understand Systems Ergonomics applied to the development of clinical systems. A basic description of clinical patient care in the system ergonomics language is provided, and the current situation found in hospital information management is criticized from an ergonomic point of view. We have laid out a model of the information flow in the clinical environment, which breaks the complex process of patient care in clearly defined elements: the Clinical Information Process Units. Presented here as an example of the application of Systems Ergonomics to the clinical working processes, the Clinical Information Process Units constitute the central element in the system ergonomic model of the information flow in the clinical environment.
Keywords: Ergonomics, System engineering, Data management, High dependency environment
