Enhancing and measuring patient safety with an innovative web-based systems approach

All nations carry a huge burden of unsafe healthcare. Use of appropriate technology and its meaningful use have a huge potential to help lighten this burden. The World Health Organization has declared Patient Safety to be a Basic Human Right. The authors support the assertion by the US Institute of Medicine that there can be no quality of care without safety. The unique nature of each healthcare setting means that 'off-the-shelf' top-down solutions seldom work. There is a pressing need to develop safety improvement and measurement methodologies. The purpose of the work reported here was therefore to develop a bottom-up methodology in which staff is empowered through an IT-assisted systems approach. This failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) approach is based upon an error reduction intervention cycle. The methodology is highly adaptable for any health care setting and appears to be very suitable for measuring the effects of improvement interventions.