Blog: David Loshin

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Do Communication Health Risks Suggest Better Automation?

According to an analysis done by US Pharmacopeia and reported in the Washington Post , "Medication errors that harm patients are seven times more frequent in the course of radiological services than in other hospital settings."

According to US Pharmacopeia's John Santell, "Many of the errors resulted from communication breakdowns, the researchers found, such as passing on incorrectly the dose or name of the drug being administered, or one worker failing to inform another about other drugs a patient was taking. The most common errors were patients getting the wrong dose or drug, failing to get the drug they should have had or having the drug administered incorrectly."

The existence of communication breakdowns as part of the operational (no pun intended) processes within a health environment raise the question of whether "electonifying" or automating the exchange of patient information might allow for the introduction of validation rules (or workflow requirements for accountability signoffs) into the process to identify potential drug administration errors before they occur. In addition, logging all actions associated with moving a patient through a particular medical process within an automated system might also help in accurately capturing "what really happened" to help with remediation of critical errors if they do slip through.

Anyone familiar with health care workflow automation that could help in this situation?

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