This is a practical book for health and IT professionals who need to
ensure that patient safety is prioritized in the design and
implementation of clinical information technology.
Healthcare professionals are increasingly reliant on information
technology to deliver care and inform their clinical decision making.
Health IT provides enormous benefits in efficiency, communication and
decision making. However a number of high-profile UK and US studies have
concluded that when Health IT is poorly designed or sub-optimally
implemented then patient safety can be compromised.
Manufacturers and healthcare organizations are increasingly required to
demonstrate that their Health IT solutions are proactively assured.
Surprisingly the majority of systems are not subject to regulation so
there is little in the way of practical guidance as to how risk
management can be achieved. The book fills that gap.
The author, a doctor and IT professional, harnesses his two decades of
experience to characterize the hazards that health technology can
introduce. Risk can never be eliminated but by drawing on lessons from
other safety-critical industries the book systematically sets out how
clinical risk can be strategically controlled. The book proposes the
employment of a Safety Case to articulate and justify residual risk so
that not only is risk proactively managed but it is seen to be managed.
These simple techniques drive product quality and allow a technology's
benefits to be realized without compromising patient safety.
