The role of human factors in the human-centred design of service processes: a focus on the healthcare sector

The term “human factors” refers to all the elements – such as cognitive, physical, and organisational aspects – influencing human behaviour in the workplace. The field of human factors in industrial engineering is concerned with understanding interactions among humans and other elements of a system. It focuses on the design of tools, machines, systems, tasks, jobs and environments for safe, comfortable, and effective human involvement and interaction. Human factors are highly valued in complex systems such as aviation, nuclear power plants management, and manufacturing, and their relevance is also increasing within the service sector as well. This interest stems from the fact that human resources have become predominant in many companies' operations and objectives achievement. Consequently, considering human factors in process design and management has countless advantages. Taking into account human factors during the process design stage avoids the occurrence of problems afterwards. Human-centred process design has been proven to reduce errors and costs and improve quality and productivity. This work aims to make an appraisal of the perception, within the scientific literature, of the role of human factors in human-centred design in the service sector. In particular, the specific case analysed concerns the design of healthcare services, assessing the more relevant factors and possible evolutions of these factors. The choice of the human factors analysis in healthcare service is salient, especially considering that it is one of the services most affected by the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic.