A transdisciplinary research paper involving ADAPT academics and researchers has has been awarded Paper of the Year by the international journal, Ergonomics. Led by Marie Ward of St James’s Hospital, the paper was co-authored by, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin, UCD, DCU and ADAPT.
Titled ‘A systems approach to managing the risk of healthcare acquired infection in an acute hospital setting supported by human factors ergonomics, data science, data governance and AI’, the paper forms a key focus of ADAPT’s research in the area of transparent digital governance.
Published in Ergonomics, the paper presents a two-year case study in an acute hospital setting exploring how healthcare acquired infection risk can be better understood and managed through a systems approach. The research combines Human Factors Ergonomics, Data Science, Data Governance and AI, supported by an Access Risk Knowledge Platform that helps connect expertise, operational insight and risk data. The paper demonstrates how a systems approach can help healthcare organisations better understand and proactively manage complex risks. By building a rich picture of the situation from a transdisciplinary perspective, the researchers were able to examine healthcare acquired infection risk in context, strengthen capability around enterprise risk management and accountability, and link operational and risk data to map patterns of risk across the hospital.
The authors conclude that human factor ergonomics tools, supported by data science, have significant potential to inform system learning and support more resilient healthcare systems.
The full paper is available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/terg20/about-this-journal#journal-metrics
ADAPT contributors to the paper included: Dr Rob Brennan (UCD), Rebecca Vining (TCD), Dr Lucy McKenna (TCD), Malick Ebiele (DCU), Martin Crane (DCU), Minh-Khoi Pham (DCU), Makika Bendechache (UoG), Marija Bezbradica (DCU), and Junli Liang (UCD).
