Education, awareness, and knowledge translation in the area of human factors are essential for optimizing the interaction between humans and technology in health care. Human factors focuses on designing systems, products, and environments that consider human capabilities and limitations to enhance overall performance, safety, and well-being. Advancing awareness, education, and knowledge around human factors will be essential to ensure that technology designed and implemented will complement human abilities, enhance workflow, and ultimately contribute to improved patient outcomes and safety [1,2]. The managers of health care IT projects also need to possess knowledge of human factors, including practical approaches that may well be the key to successful IT implementation in health care. This includes work in designing and developing new training approaches, courses, and educational programs. This also includes consideration of the competencies needed not only for human factors specialists but also for all health IT professionals and managers responsible for improving the use and usefulness of health information technologies. New approaches to knowledge translation will be required to meet this need, including increasing awareness of the importance of considering human factors in management. This is particularly crucial for organizations implementing complex and costly health information systems and technologies to ensure their success.
JMIR Human Factors welcomes submissions to the “Human Factors in Health Care: Education, Management, and Knowledge Translation” theme issue, considering current and emergent educational and training aspects of human factors, including digital competencies for human factors professionals working in health care. This theme issue will focus on research and practice applications involving communication, hybrid and electronic or digital collaboration tools, training and education, medical device interaction, telehealth, remote monitoring, health information systems, clinical decision support systems, and user and interface design skills and competencies. In addition, there is a need to identify effective real-world practices and evidence-based knowledge related to digital competencies for human factors educators, students, researchers, practitioners, and professionals.
We welcome original research papers, short communications, viewpoints, and reviews that provide insight into the intersection of education, training, digital competencies, and knowledge translation for human factors. This can include consideration of knowledge requirements at the level of human factors practitioners, as well as what management and top-level organizations need to know about human factors and usability engineering. This theme issue focuses on digital and technological skills and competencies and their specific applications in practice and research. This includes work on the human factors associated with digitization in health care, cognitive factors, planning, implementation, evaluation, and regulatory considerations. There is particular interest in research exploring the relationship between various types of human factors professionals and the digital competencies required to access, use, adapt, evaluate, and apply digital tools effectively.
Submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following areas of research and practice:
- Digital literacy and skills frameworks for human factors training in health care
- Competencies needed by health informatics professionals as well as managers in human factors and usability engineering
- Design and evaluation of digital health training and educational programs at all levels focused on human factors
- Innovative approaches to knowledge translation related to human factors in health care
- The role of health care management in ensuring effective application of human factors and usability engineering in health care design, implementation, and deployment
- Training in usability and user-centered design for health information technologies
- Simulation, augmented reality, and virtual environments for human factors education, training, and testing
- Development of innovative workshops, tutorials, and continuing education approaches to promoting understanding of human factors and their importance
- Training in clinical workflow optimization through the use of digital tools
- Education on decision-making related to human factors in health care
- Use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation in human factors in education and practice in health IT, and the associated need for competencies in these emerging areas
- Approaches to disseminating advances in human factors in health care to improve system effectiveness and adoption
- Education on regulatory and ethical considerations of human factors in health care
- Training in methods used for designing and evaluating human-computer interaction and interface design
- Interprofessional collaboration and training via digital platforms
- Approaches to disseminating human factors methods to maximize the beneficial impact of human aspects of system implementations
- Issues around recruitment, demand, training, and retention of professional talent in human factors within health care organizations
Submission Deadline: Open call
How to Submit
To submit an article to this JMIR Human Factors theme issue, please visit the submission page and select the journal section, “Theme Issue: Human Factors in Health Care: Education, Management, and Knowledge Translation.” For more information, see How Do I Submit to a Theme Issue? and Instructions for Authors.
Submissions not reviewed or accepted for publication in this JMIR Human Factors theme issue (e-collection) may be offered cascading peer review or transfer to other JMIR journals, according to standard JMIR Publications policies.
All articles submitted to this theme issue will be shared and published rapidly through the following mechanisms:
- All peer-reviewed articles in this theme issue will be immediately and permanently made open access. This is the standard for all titles within the JMIR Publications portfolio.
- Articles can be made immediately available in JMIR Preprints (with a DOI) after submission if authors select the preprint option at submission to enable this service.
Please direct questions regarding this theme issue to ed-support@jmir.org.
Theme Issue Editor
Andre Kushniruk, BA, MSc, PhD, FACMI, Editor-in-Chief, JMIR Human Factors
References
- Kushniruk AW, Borycki EM. Human factors in healthcare IT: management considerations and trends. Healthc Manage Forum. 2023;36(2):72-78. [CrossRef] [Medline]
- Borycki EM, Kushniruk AW. Health technology, quality and safety in a learning health system. Healthc Manage Forum. 2023;36(2):79-85. [CrossRef] [Medline]