Methods for Addressing Technology-induced Errors: The Current State

Abstract

Internationally, researchers have been developing methods that can be used to identify, report on, mitigate, and eliminate technology-induced errors. Although there remain issues and challenges associated with the methodologies, they have been shown to improve the quality and safety of HIT. Since the first publications documenting technology-induced errors in healthcare in 2005, we have seen in a short 10 years researchers develop ways of identifying and addressing these types of errors. We have also seen organizations begin to use these approaches. Knowledge has been translated into practice in a short ten years whereas the norm for other research areas is of 20 years.

Electronic Health Record System-Related Patient Safety Incidents – How to Classify Them?

“…Researchers have developed ways of identifying and addressing types of errors in EHRs. Patient safety incident reporting systems (IRS) are an important part of safety programs, but the difficulty in analyzing error reports has limited their utility [4,5]. Research data on IRS is still scarce.…”

“…clinical implications of the incidents [13]. There is a need to continually standardize the incident categories as well as train health professionals about how to report on types of EHRs-related errors [5]. For example, in EHRs, a medication administration error may have been due to missing data, but it is reported as a medication incident rather than a data capture event [13,14].…”

“…[1][2][3][4] There is a growing body of evidence pointing to several methods that can be used to address technology-induced errors. Patient safety incident reporting by end-users is the primary mechanism by which it is possible to learn about these concerns [3][4][5]. The European Council [6] recommends that Member States support blame-free reporting systems, which provide information about the extent, types, and causes of incidents.…”

“…Incident reporting systems (IRS) have now been in place for more than a decade in many countries but it is not well established how to define and classify events in these systems. Moreover, comprehending the limitations of patient safety incident data is indispensable in avoiding the misinterpretation of the data [5,7].…”

Human factors in healthcare IT: Management considerations and trends

“…11 In addition, the approach can help to identify serious usability problems that may be associated with safety issues. [12][13][14][15] Feedback from such work can identify a wide range of specific usability problems (and a large variety of problems have now been reported in the literature), some of which could lead to user dissatisfaction with the system, while others could potentially lead to medical error and patient harm (see Table 1).…”