Colette Longstaffe, a registered nurse working in NHS Supply Chain in the Clinical and Product Assurance Team (CaPA), discusses how medical device design can impact on usability and patient safety, and the importance of embedding human factor principles into product specifications for the NHS procurement frameworks.
To improve safety, it is absolutely essential that human factor and design principles are embedded into the specifications for devices and this is what NHS Supply Chain are aiming to achieve through focused engagement with the end users of the products to gain a full understanding around who what where how and when they are used.
