NHS trusts warned that ‘legacy debt’ could pose patient safety risk

Clinical safety officers (CSOs) have warned that patient safety could be put at risk by healthcare organisations’ historical failure to comply with digital clinical safety standards.

The Digital Health Networks CSO Council has issued an advisory statement for NHS trusts and integrated care boards about the potential consequences of not completing tasks such as hazard logging and safety case reporting for software.

It follows a BBC investigation, published in May 2024, which found 126 instances of serious harm linked to IT issues across 31 trusts, including three patient deaths. 

“There will be a lot of trusts which have this ‘legacy debt’ of systems that they have had for many years, where they either haven’t asked the manufacturer for their side of the deal (which is required under DCB 0129) or they haven’t done their side of the deal in house (which is required under DCB 0160),” said Faye Clough, lead clinical safety engineer and CSO at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

She told Digital Health News that this could lead to “patient safety incidents, reports of IT incidents, IT errors, and the reputational damage that could come out of that for trusts”.

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Source: Digital Health News, 20 January 2025