FORT WASHINGTON, PA — ECRI appointed safety researcher Najmedin Meshkati to its Board of Trustees as the health care organization expands its use of human factors engineering and systems-based methods to reduce preventable patient harm.
Meshkati brings nearly four decades of research into risk and reliability in high-consequence industries including nuclear power, aviation and petrochemical operations.
His work has included investigations of the BP Texas City Refinery explosion, Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Meshkati also served on the Federal Aviation Administration’s independent Expert Panel examining Boeing’s safety management system and safety culture and testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. He currently chairs California’s Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee.
The appointment brings expertise developed outside health care into ECRI’s efforts to address patient safety as a systems problem rather than relying primarily on individual clinicians to prevent errors.
“In high-risk industries like aviation and nuclear power, companies with reliably safe outcomes view safety from a system-lens, rooted in human factors engineering and a safety culture,” ECRI President and CEO Marcus Schabacker said. “Relying on individual vigilance to avoid accidents is shortsighted and dangerous, yet it happens in healthcare every day.”
ECRI is increasing its focus on SafeSystem Solutions, an approach centered on human factors engineering and workforce safety culture. Its work includes evaluating how health care systems and the technologies used within them contribute to safety risks.
Schabacker said patient harm often develops through a chain of contributing conditions rather than a single failure.
“Healthcare must move beyond looking at safety failures in isolation to better understand the conditions that allow harm to occur,” he said. “Professor Meshkati brings critical systems-thinking expertise to ECRI that will help us scale a more holistic approach to safety.”
Meshkati served as a commissioner of The Joint Commission from 2016 through 2024 and currently serves on the Governance Board of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation.
He has also been a member of the Quality Committee of the University of Southern California’s hospital governing boards and is active in the World Health Organization and Imperial College of London Global Patient Safety Collaborative.
Meshkati is a tenured professor at USC, with appointments in civil and environmental engineering, industrial and systems engineering, and international relations. He is also an elected fellow and inaugural “Titan” of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
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