摘要Industries such as aviation and nuclear power have greatly improved their safety performance through the application of human factors methods to the design, development, selection and deployment of a range of technologies and work processes. Health care safety performance generally lags behind these industries and would benefit from a similar application of human factors methods. Clinical engineers are in an ideal position to acquire and apply this human factors knowledge, and lead its adoption in health care. This paper describes a text that has been written speciifcally for clinical engineers and others who design, develop, select and support the use of health care technologies, to enable them to learn the key methods of human factors and adopt them as part of their ongoing work. Early indications are that these approaches help to ensure that health care technologies are used more safely and effectively, and it is hoped that large-scale adoption will result in a noticeable and worthwhile improvement in overall health care safety. The described text is now ready and has been published in English on the IFMBE website. It is available as a free download in PDF format. Clinical engineers and others working around the world in the area of health technology are encouraged to learn and adopt these methods, and use them as appropriate in their local setting. At time of writing, plans are underway for a translation of this book into Spanish. Once completed, this version will also be made available online at no charge. The authors encourage readers to contact them with their experiences, and the aim is to build a worldwide community that gradually adopts these methods and helps to drive safety improvements in health care.