Daniel France
Research Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
Research Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Intellectual Neighborhoods
Research Focus
My professional concentration is health systems
engineering and my primary research aim is to model and explain the
relationships between care delivery, provider performance, and patient safety.
I am particularly interested in applying knowledge from other high-risk
industries and methods from human factors and systems engineering to study, model,
and improve operational efficiency, clinical decision making and individual and
team performance in complex, high-risk clinical environments. My research
program is motivated by recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine and
the National Academy of Engineering to apply systems engineering methods to
improve the quality of the U.S. healthcare system.
Biography
Dr. France is a Research Professor of Anesthesiology, Medicine, Nursing, and Biomedical Engineering at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is the Assistant Director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Improving Patient Safety, and a past member of the Executive Safety Council and Risk Management and Patient Safety Committee. Dr. France earned a doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Public Health from the University of Utah. He has also received advanced training in Healthcare Delivery Improvement from Intermountain Health Care in Salt Lake City, Utah. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, Dr. France worked as a systems engineer for the Department of Defense and private defense contractors. His professional focus is in health systems engineering and his primary research aims are to model and explain the relationships between hospital efficiency, provider performance, and patient safety. Dr. France is particularly interested in applying knowledge from other high-risk industries and methods from human factors and systems engineering to study and improve operational efficiency and individual and team performance in complex, high-risk clinical environments. He has active grant support from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundations, Department of Homeland Security, and Veteran’s Health Administration.