Measuring and improving patient safety through health information technology: The Health IT Safety Framework

This is a review of Hardeep Singh and Dean Sittig's "Measuring and improving patient safety through health information technology: The Health IT Safety Framework."

Introduction

Despite rapid adoption and use of health information technology (HIT or health IT) with the potential to improve patient safety outcomes, there is still no clear way to measure the impact of this technology on these outcomes. The health IT safety framework was created to contextualize "health IT-related patient safety measurement, monitoring, and improvement."

Framework Rationale

Most organizations have not been focusing on health IT-related patient safety as they race to implement systems that meet meaningful use (MU) criteria. This framework will help put measurement of health IT-related patient safety at the forefront of an organization's existing patient safety efforts, which will be essential as use of HIT continues to flourish. The 3 essential elements this framework addresses are:

"1. refine the science of measuring health IT-related patient safety 2. make health IT-related patient safety an organizational priority by securing commitment from organizational leadership and refocusing the organization's clinical governance structure to facilitate measurement and monitoring 3. develop an environment that is conducive to detecting, fixing and learning from system vulnerabilities."

Overview of Framework

Sociotechnical Work System

The Sociotechnical Work System