Contextual Inquiry for Medical Device Design

Dr. Mary Beth Privitera, M.Design, FIDSA, is internationally known as an expert in medical product design, specifically in the area of applied human factors. She is a Professor at the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and works collaboratively among the Colleges of Medicine, Engineering and Design. She is a consultant to the medical device industry with expertise in user interaction design and human factors. Additionally, she serves as faculty and co-chair of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation’s Human Engineering Committee.

As a Professor at the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, she is a Co-Founder of the Medical Device Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program. Her previous academic appointments include industrial design and in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

She has worked on devices which are intended for use across the practice of medicine and in home health situations. Her current research focuses on applied ergonomics and design interpretation. She has conducted contextual inquiry studies throughout the hospital with results intended to inform the design of devices, including physiologic monitoring and clinical decision making, software-based tools including intraprocedural augmented reality. In addition, she currently has had research funding supported by the Gates Foundation and US FDA CDER Division. She is a Fulbright Scholar in collaboration with the University of Nottingham.