Priya Pennathur, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, has received $671,951 for a three-year research project from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, to understand and model how health care providers create, use, and transform health information in their work.

The long-term goal of Pennathur’s project is to design and test health information systems that best support healthcare providers’ cognitive work.

During the award period, Pennathur and her research team in the Information and Cognitive Systems Engineering Research Laboratory, will focus their efforts on understanding information use during the patient transition and discharge process in intensive care units, inpatient floors, and outpatient clinics.

They will develop novel measures relating information use and patient safety, and design next generation health IT interfaces for enhancing clinical communication, workflow and information use. The overarching goal is to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety.