Learning from Failure: A Case Study of Human Driven Risk Assessment in Medical Simulator Design
Open Access
- Author:
- Bartuska, Rachel
- Area of Honors:
- Industrial Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Scarlett Rae Miller, Thesis Supervisor
Andris Freivalds, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Human factors
usability
risk assessment
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
Multiple Criteria Decision Making
mixed-reality
medical simulation - Abstract:
- Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a qualitative and quantitative approach to measuring and analyzing risk that compiles and ranks failure modes, their effects, and their corrective actions. Though widely used, traditional FMEA has been criticized for the lack of a scientific basis behind the Risk Priority Number calculation. To combat this, researchers have argued that Multiple Criteria Decision-Making methods, such as Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), should be used to rank failure modes instead. TOPSIS, as with other MCDM methods, more rigorously ranks items based on a set of numerical scores. As such, the current paper was developed to present a case study that applies FMEA and TOPSIS to a Central Venous Catheterization (CVC) training simulator called the Dynamic Haptic Robotic Trainer (DHRT). FMEA was needed because while a beta prototype exists for research purposes, there are several failure modes that prevent this system from wide-spread deployment. Our results provide insight into how FMEA can be used to identify a system’s highest priority failure modes and maximize improvement recommendations. Expert interviews were used to compile DHRT process steps and all possible failure modes that might occur during each step. The expert responses were consolidated to create one list of steps and one list of unique failure modes, each with a set of numerical scores. The expert-generated scores were also inputted into TOPSIS to prioritize the top 15 failure modes. Top ranking failure modes were the focus of recommendations for future work on the DHRT, particularly in the realm of usability.