Hosted by the International Ergonomics and Human Factors Association, this lightning talk brings together four international experts to share short, focused perspectives on AI’s impact on human work, from AI-enabled clinical decision support in emergency care to the usability and safety of digital health technologies to patient safety governance to auditing bias in large language models across workplace and HR settings. Attendees will gain a cross-disciplinary snapshot of how HFE expertise is shaping the responsible design and implementation of AI, followed by live Q&A with the panel.
Panelists
Hanna J. Barton, PhD (they/them) is a Scientist in the BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and founding Research Director of the Emergency Care Systems Laboratory. As a human factors and health systems engineer embedded directly in clinical operations, they work collaboratively with clinicians and patients to design systems that reliably deliver safe, equitable, and humane care. Their current research focuses on how AI is transforming emergency care, including practical frameworks for implementing AI-enabled clinical decision support in the emergency department and work examining how patients perceive and experience AI-supported care. Professor Melissa Baysari PhD CHFEP FAIDH leads the Digital Health Human Factors Group in the Sydney Nursing School at the University of Sydney. Melissa’s work seeks to understand and improve the interactions between healthcare providers, health technologies and organisations, and she is particularly interested in evaluating and ensuring the usability and safety of health technologies, and minimising unintended consequences following implementation. She has published widely in the areas of patient safety, electronic medical record systems and decision support, and her research has resulted in a number of significant changes being made to clinical information systems, as well as to hospital policy and work practices. She is the co-chair of the IEA’s Technical Committee on AI. Tommaso Bellandi, PhD, Eur.Erg. is Director of Patient Safety at the Tuscany NorthWest Trust, Italy, where he leads work on patient safety, clinical risk management, and the integration of human factors and ergonomics into healthcare governance and service improvement. He has developed substantial international experience through contributions to World Health Organization policies on patient safety as a universal right, with particular expertise in incident reporting and learning systems, patient engagement, and the translation of ergonomics into safer healthcare practice across complex care settings. William Guey is a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University’s Institute of Human Factors Engineering and Intelligent System Interaction, where his research centers on AI ethics and LLM bias measurement. His recent work develops multilingual frameworks for auditing demographic and geopolitical bias in large language models across workplace, HR, and public-service settings. He is the co-chair of the IEA’s Technical Committee on AI. Moderator
Karen Jacobs, OT, EdD, OTR, CPE, FAOTA is an occupational therapist with a career spanning over four decades. She is the Program Director of the post-professional doctorate in occupational therapy program and a Clinical Professor of occupational therapy at Boston University Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. As a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association (FAOTA), the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), and the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), Dr. Jacobs has been recognized for her contributions as a scholar, professor, advocate, and mentor, inspiring countless students and practitioners. She has authored numerous publications, including books, chapters, and articles, and, in 1990, was the founding editor-in-chief of the journal WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation. She is the chair of the IEA’s Technical Committee on AI. Find more details and register here.

Event details