HS Design, Inc. (HSD), a leading full-service design and product development firm specializing in medical, healthcare, and life sciences, is excited to announce its formal partnership with Dr. Mary Beth Privitera. This new partnership will expand HSD’s current research, usability and human factors capabilities that will allow the team to be a global leader in use and usability.

Mary Beth Privitera, PhD, FIDSA brings broad, extensive, hands-on experience in medical device design and a unique approach to collaborative teamwork. As Co-Chair of the AAMI Human Engineering committee, she is widely recognized as an expert in human factors and is positioned at the forefront of FDA guidance. In 2015, she published Contextual Inquiry for Medical Device Design, which focuses on the value of early and thorough immersion into all aspects of the problem the medical device seeks to solve. As a leading faculty member in the University of Cincinnati Biomedical Engineering program, she has led the strategic design of innovative devices for endovascular procedures, various types of surgery including vascular, urology, cranio-facial and plastic surgery, emergency medicine and diabetic care. Mary Beth’s industry practice and academia experience recognizes and is based on the integrative value of teamwork and collaboration with healthcare professionals, which produces superior results. “Working with Mary Beth in the field has given me an appreciation of her vast knowledge base in research. Her unique approach to collaboration allows her to explore, remove and overcome barriers and biases and allows for innovative ideas to emerge. This talent makes her an indispensible member of the HSD team”, said Olivia Ford, Lead researcher at HSD.

Tor Alden, Principal of HSD further commented, “We are extremely excited about Dr. Privitera joining the HSD family. We have indirectly partnered and collaborated with Mary Beth for many years and it is an easy decision now to create a formal relationship. Her expertise in user research, combined with HSD’s existing usability knowledge, presents an enormous opportunity for our current and future clients. This partnership allows us to strengthen and broaden our base of contextual research, human factors engineering, formative and summative studies which ultimately benefits our clients and strategic partners. HSD now stands as one of a handful of ISO 13485 certified product development firms with this much knowledge in current usability standards under one roof.”