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JMIR Human Factors

(Re-)designing health care and making health care interventions and technologies usable, safe, and effective.

Editor-in-Chief:

Andre Kushniruk, BA, MSc, PhD, FACMI, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, Canada


Impact Factor 3.9 More information about Impact Factor CiteScore 5.6 More information about CiteScore

JMIR Human Factors is a multidisciplinary journal with contributions from design experts, medical researchers, engineers, and social scientists.

JMIR Human Factors focuses on understanding how the behaviour and thinking of humans can influence and shape the design of health care interventions and technologies, and how the design can be evaluated and improved to make health care interventions and technologies usable, safe, and effective. This includes usability studies and heuristic evaluations, studies concerning ergonomics and error prevention, design studies for medical devices and healthcare systems/workflows, enhancing teamwork through Human Factors based teamwork training, measuring non-technical skills in staff like leadership, communication, situational awareness and teamwork, and healthcare policies and procedures to reduce errors and increase safety.

JMIR Human Factors focuses aspires to lead health care towards a culture of "usability by design", as well as to a culture of testing, error-prevention and safety, by promoting and publishing reports rigorously evaluating the usability and human factors aspects in health care, as well as encouraging the development and debate on new methods in this emerging field. Possible contributions include usability studies and heuristic evaluations, studies concerning ergonomics and error prevention, design studies for medical devices and healthcare systems/workflows, enhancing teamwork through human factors-based teamwork training, measuring non-technical skills in staff like leadership, communication, situational awareness and teamwork, and healthcare policies and procedures to reduce errors and increase safety. Reviews, viewpoint papers and tutorials are as welcome as original research.

JMIR Human Factors is indexed in National Library of Medicine (NLM)/MEDLINE, PubMed, PubMed Central, DOAJ, Scopus, Sherpa Romeo, PsycINFO, and the Web of Science (WoS)/ESCI.

JMIR Human Factors received a 2025 Impact Factor of 3.9, ranking Q1 in Health Care Sciences & Services (46/194).

JMIR Human Factors received a Scopus CiteScore of 5.6 (2025), placing it in the 69th percentile (15/48) as a second quartile (Q2) journal in the field of Human Factors and Ergonomics, and in the 66th percentile (56/168) as a second quartile (Q2) journal in the field of Health Informatics.


Recent Articles

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Usability Evaluation Case Studies

mHealth (mobile health) interventions that integrate psychoeducation with structured problem-solving training (PST) hold strong potential for improving self-management of chronic conditions. Evaluating the usability of these interventions requires assessing technological, pedagogical, and sociocultural fit. However, most usability evaluations remain narrowly technocentric, focusing on interface-level metrics while neglecting pedagogical coherence, cultural responsiveness, and patient learning needs.

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Usability Evaluation Case Studies

Neonatal mortality remains a leading contributor to under-5 deaths globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While machine learning (ML)–based risk prediction models show promise for identifying high-risk neonates, published evidence describing the real-world usability and practical implementation of ML-derived neonatal risk prediction tools within routine clinical workflows in LMIC neonatal units remains limited.

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Usability Evaluation Case Studies

After the emergence of telemedicine as a major health care delivery mode during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sheba Medical Center (SMC) rapidly transitioned its outpatient clinics to telemedicine. A postimplementation satisfaction study revealed that while nearly 90% of patients reported a positive experience, only 38% of clinicians expressed high satisfaction. SMC soon established Sheba BEYOND, a dedicated virtual hospital. This initiative was accompanied by extensive efforts to improve the telemedicine experience. In 2025, a follow-up survey addressing clinician satisfaction and acceptance was conducted.

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Psychological, Behavioral, Social, and/or Cultural Experiments and Interventions

Self-injurious thoughts and behaviors, including suicidal ideation, planning, attempts, and nonsuicidal self-injury, are a significant public health concern among college students. Community college students face elevated mental health risks and persistent barriers to traditional services, particularly those from underserved and ethnoracially minoritized backgrounds, underscoring the need for scalable, accessible digital mental health interventions.

Doctor reviews AI summary of patient's medical history on computer screen
Design and Usability of Clinical Software and EHRs

Large language models can generate fluent summaries of longitudinal medical records, but in high-stakes clinical settings, verification burden remains a barrier to trust. Existing provenance mechanisms such as document-level citations and section references often require manual search within long, fragmented notes, limiting their usefulness during time-constrained workflows for clinicians.

Hospital room with medical bed, equipment, and colorful murals
User-Centered Design Case Studies

Virtual clinics allow doctors to connect to patients in difficult-to-reach locations. While this can result in improved access to care, implementing existing virtual clinics in these locations is difficult due to their contextual constraints. To address these challenges, a virtual clinic system for remote, rural, and underserved areas was developed based on user-centered design principles. To complete the user-centered design cycle, the developed system was then implemented and evaluated in the target contexts.

Woman doing yoga at home with digital wellness platform guiding her
Design and Usability of Consumer Health Tech and Home Monitoring Devices

Mental health challenges such as stress and depression are prevalent among employees. Mobile health platforms that deliver exercise or yoga interventions offer a promising approach to improve mental health outcomes in this population.

Worker using tablet for CARE QI 5.0 checklist in a factory
Tools and Questionnaires in Human Factors Evaluation

Despite increasing recognition of human factors in technologically advanced manufacturing, psychological resilience remains an underexplored dimension. Existing studies often rely on generic instruments that fail to capture the specific adaptive challenges faced by workers in high-tech environments. There is a growing need for context-sensitive tools capable of assessing resilience in line with the human-centric vision of Industry 5.0.

Doctor in white coat reviewing medical data on a tablet.
Viewpoints and Opinions on Human Factors

Patient safety classification systems are fundamental to surveillance, organizational learning, research, and governance because they enable adverse events and near misses to be organized into standardized categories for comparison and analysis. However, the increasing complexity of health information technology (HIT)–related patient safety incidents challenges the assumptions underpinning conventional classification approaches, as these incidents often emerge from dynamic, distributed, and evolving sociotechnical interactions rather than discrete, time-bounded events. In this Viewpoint, I argue that many of the challenges associated with classifying HIT-related patient safety incidents arise not simply from limitations of individual classification systems but from the inherent representational logic of classification itself. By viewing classification as a knowledge practice rather than merely a technical tool for organizing incident data, I contend that abstraction, boundary-setting, and standardization inevitably simplify complex sociotechnical processes and constrain how safety problems are represented, interpreted, and acted upon. I discuss 4 recurring representational limitations that characterize the application of patient safety classification systems to HIT-related incidents: fragmentation of sociotechnical interactions, loss of temporality and evolving processes, inadequate representation of scale and propagation across systems, and normalization of “use error” through simplified attribution of responsibility. These limitations can contribute to incomplete organizational learning, misaligned safety interventions, and challenges in interpreting and comparing classified patient safety data across health care settings. Rather than arguing against the continued use of patient safety classification systems, I propose that their strengths and limitations should be recognized simultaneously. Classification remains indispensable for surveillance, learning, and governance, but it should be interpreted as one component of a broader sociotechnical understanding of patient safety. Recognizing the representational limits of classification can support more reflexive interpretation of classification-based evidence and encourage complementary approaches that better capture the complexity of HIT-related patient safety.

Doctor checks patient's smartwatch heart rate data on phone.
Design and Usability of Consumer Health Tech and Home Monitoring Devices

Digital health technology enables collection of continuous physiological and behavioral data from participants in clinical trials. This supports hybrid trial designs, potentially reducing clinic visits and participant burden for patient monitoring. Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is characterized by an unpredictable clinical course, creating a need for new treatments and more sensitive approaches to assessing treatment effectiveness, disease progression, and clinically meaningful trial end points.

Elderly man using a tablet with a search bar overlay.
User-Centered Design Case Studies

Older adults with cognitive impairment often face significant challenges in memoir writing, including memory fragmentation, emotional loneliness, and speech and language disorders. Although AI-generated content (AIGC) technologies such as GPT-3.5 show potential in creative tasks, they often lack the personalization and adaptability required for users with dementia. Generic AIGC tools often fail to address the heterogeneous cognitive and emotional needs of this population.

Elderly woman with short blonde hair wearing glasses and a yellow shirt, using a tablet.
User Needs and Competencies

With Türkiye’s aging population and widespread internet usage, the excessive seeking of health information through online platforms, formally identified as cyberchondria, has emerged as a concern affecting older individuals’ health perception and psychological well-being.

Preprints Open for Peer Review

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