This Workshop is held in conjunction with 26th International System Safety Conference

Overview

Aviation and healthcare are two prominent safety-critical domains, sharing many similarities yet differing on several dimensions. Previous work has demonstrated the likeness between airplane cockpit and operating rooms, but also the differing communication styles in the two environments. System design and evaluation methods proven effective in reducing errors and accidents in aviation may be applicable to healthcare, or vice-versa. Consequently, reusability of knowledge and skills between the domains can facilitate system safety. Given these benefits, the transferability of design and evaluation methods across these two domains is important to explore and exploit.

The goal of the workshop is to explore transferability of methods, as related to safety requirements and error factors, through a systematic review of similarities and differences of existing design and evaluation methods in both domains. Contributions from practitioners and researchers working in one or both fields are invited. Participants will engage in dialogues to reflect on strengths and weaknesses of a repertoire of methods, and how gaps between requirements and methods can be bridged with knowledge borrowed from the related domains. Follow-up activities will be organized to extend participants' efforts and interests to pursue long-term goals (e.g. developing a generic framework).

Goals
The goal of this workshop is to push forward a systematic evaluation of the transferability of design and evaluation methods across two safety-critical domains – i.e. aviation and healthcare. The outcomes of this workshop will have significant implications for the scientifically and practically informed implementation of methodologies borrowed from one domain for implementation in the other. The key immediate goals are to:

  • Identify key differences and similarities in the activities carried out by people in these two safety critical domains
  • Identify how the current design and evaluation methods in each domain have been derived from the requirements of the respective activity
  • Define criteria and heuristics for determining the appropriateness of transferability of a method
  • Integrate knowledge on system safety design and evaluation methods

In the long run, the workshop aims to form a SIG that would continuously bring together researchers and practitioners to continue the work on further formalizing the transferability of methods across safety-critical domains. In particular, the scientific goals of this community would be to:

  • Operationalize criteria and heuristics defined during the workshop into quantifiable metrics of transferability
  • Identify the impact of method transferability on the development process in each domain, and on safety
  • Expand the focus of this work to include other safety-critical domains
  • Develop a generic framework for design and evaluation of safety-critical systems

Workshop Topics

An important factor in comparing design and evaluation methodologies is to consider the differences in the practice of each domain - there is an increasing body of research in organizational and leadership topics that finds a consistent difference in the types of communication and coordination employed in healthcare and aviation activity - a great portion of healthcare practice is driven by implicit communication means, while explicitness underlies aviation activity.

A major goal of the workshop is to explore the similarities and differences in both high-risk domains. Case studies of system designs and evaluations in both domains are of interest, especially approaches that address the following issues:

  • task analysis methods that consider human error and safety issues
  • human factors, in particular human error
  • communication and workflow analysis
  • system safety design
  • breakdowns of communication, coordination, or technical breakdowns
  • communication standards/protocol design
  • verification and validation of safety-critical systems
  • situation awareness
  • interruptions
  • system factors
  • theoretical frameworks such as activity theory, situated activity, distributed cognition, organizational and social theory

Insights from such work will serve as the basis for analyzing the design and evaluation methods being deployed and drawing conclusions on their transferability. This workshop will also review the state of the art in utilizing knowledge about errors to inform safety requirements and appropriate design and evaluation methodologies.

Submissions

Submissions will be 4-6 pages in the ISSC2008 format (follow the link "paper formatting instructions").
Deadline: Extended to July 10th 2008
Please send your submissions to safety at tik.ee.ethz.ch, or click here

Workshop Scope: Methods for design, analysis and evaluation of systems that address issues related to the safety-critical aspects of the applicable domain (i.e. human error, communication, coordination, situation awareness, workflow, physical environment design, etc.) The workshop will NOT consider methods related to management and efficiency of airports and hospitals, or passenger and patient throughput.

Types of submissions:
  • Case studies of designs/evaluations that applied a domain-specific method to a safety-critical system
  • Case studies of applying customized/in-house generic method to the design of a system in order to address safety requirements
  • Case studies of designs/evaluations that transferred an aviation method to the healthcare domain, or vice versa
  • Applied conceptual frameworks enabling the understanding of the transferability of methods across the two domains

All submissions will be peer reviewed on the relevance to the workshop theme by the Program Committee.

Publication: Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. Following the workshop, authors will have the opportunity to extend their contributions to a full paper for inclusion in a special issue of an international journal. The extended papers will undergo a new round of peer reviews.

Participant Background: Our invitation is for dialogue among researchers and practitioners with experience in all aspects of healthcare and aviation practice. These include a wide range of industry and academic professionals - physicians, nurses, pilots, air-traffic controllers, software and interface designers, human factors professionals, social and organizational theory researchers, safety experts, etc.

Activities

  1. White paper presentation
  2. Submission presentations by topic
  3. Discussion of intersection of domain methods
  4. Group integration
  5. Discussion

Workshop Outcomes

  • Knowledge of new methods for safety-critical system design
  • Informed Transferability of Methods - participants will outline a set of criteria for the transferability of methods across domains
  • Findings integration - a table of similarities and differences between the activities in both domains and the methods employed
  • The workshop organizers will produce a working draft of the core themes and findings, which will be used for a future publication.

The workshop contributions and outcomes aim to produce:

  • online and printed proceedings
  • a special issue of an international journal
  • A special interest group (SIG) will be formed to continue the collaboration
  • an online forum on the topic

Organizers

Svetlena Taneva, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), Switzerland
Effie Lai-Chong Law, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), Switzerland
Avi Parush, Carleton University, Canada

Program Committee

Richard Cook, University of Chicago, USA
Guy Boy, EURISCO International, France
Robert L. Helmreich, University of Texas, USA
Chris Johnson, University of Glasgow, UK
Yan Xiao, University of Maryland School of Medicine, USA
Philipp Quaet-Faslem, Siemens Corporate Technology, Germany
Mark Anderson, Boeing, USA
Gudela Grote, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Fabio Paterno, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Philippe Palanque, Université Paul Sabatier, France
Ginette Taylor, Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, Canada
William Wong, Middlesex University, UK
Avi Parush, Carleton University, Canada
Svetlena Taneva, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Effie Law, ETH Zurich, Switzerland