Sustainable System Understanding & Empathic Product Design — A Custom-Built Qualification Concept for Biomedical Engineers

Abstract

The design of process and user oriented biomedical technology is a fundamental basis for safe and efficient clinical treatment processes. Therefore, especially biomedical engineers need a sustainable and empathic understanding of clinical work systems and medical patient treatment processes. In this context the Department for Human Factors Engineering and Product Ergonomics at the Technical University of Berlin has developed a custom-built three day qualification program for biomedical engineers in close cooperation with the Klinikum Ernst von Bergmann in Potsdam combining theoretical basics with simulated medical treatment scenarios and an additional visitation of according clinical work places. Our experience with this qualification concept for biomedical engineers especially results from a training course designed for ten engineering staff members of the Department for Product Development of B. Braun Melsungen. An anonymous evaluation of the various course contents clearly shows, that especially the simulated treatment scenarios in combination with getting personally acquainted with the everyday work processes of the clinical reality helps to achieve the desired learning effect among the different course participants: a sustainable system understanding as a basis for an empathic development of technological solutions especially adapted to the complexity of the underlying clinical work processes and specific user requirements. In addition to that, the evaluation of similar qualification courses for other (non-engineering) staff members of the very same company showed quite similar assessment results underlining the immense importance of a sustainable and empathic understanding of clinical work systems and their complexity for everyone directly or indirectly involved within the optimization of clinical work processes.