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Showing results for tags 'Technology'.
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Content ArticleIntegrated care systems (ICSs) and provider collaboratives are ushering in a move towards more collaborative working across organisations in health, social care and the voluntary and community sector – and digital health technologies have an important role to play. Digital technologies can help information and communication to flow across organisations, people and places, bringing benefits for both patients and staff, eg, fewer tests, improved patient safety, reduced costs and saving both patients and staff time. However, using digital health technologies to overcome silos, often referred to as interoperability, has been a longstanding challenge. The King's Fund undertook research to understand how to progress interoperability in health and care.
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Content Article
Andrew Stroud's daughter Bia has type 1 diabetes, and in this blog, Andrew talks about his family's experiences supporting Bia to manage her diabetes. He describes the huge value of technology in improving diabetes management and reducing the mental burden of the condition on people with diabetes and their parents and carers. However, like all technology, medical devices for diabetes can fail, and Andrew highlights the need to be prepared for this situation to ensure the person with diabetes is safe while they cannot use the devices they rely on every day. -
Content ArticleThe Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) has published a new report on lessons learned from the pandemic to support the future of digital change in health and care. Following a consultation process with 100 of its members, PRSB has published the report examining the digital transformation of services during the pandemic and it recommends how the system can use the lessons in the future. The Digital Health and Care and COVID-19 report recommendations include building on the enthusiasm for digital but reviewing and evaluating safety implications, particularly for remote and virtual consultation where both clinical risk and patient access need to be addressed. The report also includes a focus on quality in practice, including the use of apps and other digital technologies.
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Content ArticleIn this study, Avery et al. estimated the incidence of avoidable significant harm in primary care in England, and describe and classify the associated patient safety incidents and generate suggestions to mitigate risks of ameliorable factors contributing to the incidents. The study found there is likely to be a substantial burden of avoidable significant harm attributable to primary care in England with diagnostic error accounting for most harms. Based on the contributory factors we found, improvements could be made through more effective implementation of existing information technology, enhanced team coordination and communication, and greater personal and informational continuity of care.
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Content ArticleStudies comprehensively assessing interventions to improve team communication and to engage patients and care partners in intensive care units are lacking. This study from Dykes et al. examines the effectiveness of a patient-centered care and engagement program in the medical ICU. They found implementation of a structured team communication and patient engagement program in the ICU was associated with a reduction in adverse events and improved patient and care partner satisfaction.
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Content ArticleThis special Patient Safety Network Perspective compiles findings and insights into a series of case studies from interviews and written responses from leaders at three different health systems who had to increase their telehealth capacities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Content Article
NHS e-Review platform
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Regulatory bodies/standards/guidance
A national bespoke system, called NHS e-Review, has been developed and launched as part of the NHS Covid Incident Recovery programme. The online system has been developed to support clinicians record the clinical priority of patients on a waiting list and to identify alternative pathways for patients if required. -
Content ArticleThe Clinical Command Centre is designed to optimise many aspects of day-to-day patient care and help create better patient experiences, outcomes, and lower costs. It makes sense of vast amounts of data for hospitals and healthcare systems worldwide. Today, Command Centres are also helping these systems meet the challenge of COVID-19. Currently, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT) is the only Trust in Europe equipped with this technology which is likely to be crucial in dealing with any second wave of COVID-19 cases. In this video, Mel Pickup, CEO of BTHFT, shed some light on how they've been using advanced data visualisation and the vision for using it in the future. By making sense of vast amounts of operational data, the technology is enabling leadership teams to make critical, real-time decisions about patient care.
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Content ArticleAdvances in 3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, are capturing attention in the healthcare field because of their potential to improve treatment for certain medical conditions. A radiologist, for instance, might create an exact replica of a patient’s spine to help plan a surgery; a dentist could scan a broken tooth to make a crown that fits precisely into the patient’s mouth. In both instances, the doctors can use 3D printing to make products that specifically match a patient’s anatomy. The technology is not limited to planning surgeries or producing customised dental restorations such as crowns; 3D printing has enabled the production of customized prosthetic limbs, cranial implants, or orthopedic implants such as hips and knees. At the same time, its potential to change the manufacturing of medical products—particularly high-risk devices such as implants—could affect patient safety, creating new challenges for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight. When 3D printing is used to manufacture a medical product at the point of care, oversight responsibility can become less clear. It is not yet apparent how the agency should adapt its regulatory requirements to ensure that these 3D-printed products are safe and effective for their intended use. The FDA does not directly regulate the practice of medicine, which is overseen primarily by state medical boards. Rather, the agency’s jurisdiction covers medical products. In some clinical scenarios where 3D printing might be used, such as the printing of an anatomical model that is used to plan surgery, or perhaps one day the printing of human tissue for transplantation, the distinction between product and practice is not always easy to discern. This issue brief explains how medical 3D printing is used in health care, how FDA regulates the products that are made, and what regulatory questions the agency faces.
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Content ArticleScienceDirect uses heuristic and machine-learning approaches to extract relevant information from their extensive collection of content. They compile this information on a topic-by-topic basis providing the reader both depth and breadth on a specific area of interest. This collection of research and data focuses on biomedical technology assessments.
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Content ArticleHealth IT (HIT) systems are increasingly becoming a core infrastructural technology in healthcare. However, failures of these systems, under certain conditions, can lead to patient harm and as such the safety case for HIT has to be explicitly made. This study from Habli et al., published in Safety Science, focuses on safety assurance practices of HIT in England and investigates how clinicians and engineers currently analyse, control and justify HIT safety risks. Two areas of strength were identified: establishment of a systematic approach to risk management and close engagement by clinicians; and two areas for improvement: greater depth and clarity in hazard analysis practices and greater organisational support for assuring safety. Overall, the dynamic characteristics of healthcare combined with insufficient funding have made it challenging to generate and explain the safety evidence to the required level of detail and rigour. Improvements in the form of practical HIT-specific safety guidelines and tools are needed. The lack of publicly available examples of credible HIT safety cases is a major deficit. The availability of these examples can help clarify the significance of the HIT risk analysis evidence and identify the necessary expertise and organisational commitments.
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Content ArticleThe COVID-19 crisis has created a watershed moment for the NHS, demanding a reappraisal of how essential services are delivered to the public. Even prior to COVID-19, the NHS recognised a pressing need to rethink healthcare using user-centred design principles, based on populations, not organisations. With the advent of the pandemic that pressing need has become an operational imperative. Digital capability has been and will continue to be a key part of transformation, but will only work when aligned with reforms in other key enablers such as financial flow, workforce planning and regulation. Many industries have already made the shift to enabling collaboration and innovation through more agile models of delivery by embracing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and/or flexible and secure forms of (multi) cloud storage. Health, on the other hand, until now has introduced new technologies with the objective of improving existing pathways and service delivery models. There is now an opportunity to reimagine healthcare, driving true transformation enabled by digital capabilities.
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Content ArticleThis report has been developed by the Patient Coalition for AI, Data and Digital Tech in Health, which aims to unite representatives from patient advocacy groups, including Patient Safety Learning, Royal Colleges, medical charities, industry and other stakeholders committed to ensuring that patient interests. The report highlights that uptake of digital health technologies has been limited, while patient experience of technologies including video conferencing and mobile apps has been mixed. Although patients strongly believe in the value of digital health, there are still significant concerns about using it, particularly around data collection and sharing.
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Content Article
Osmond Ergonomics: Posture guides
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Patient safety in health and care
Agile working is on the increase and here to stay. This brings its own challenges for people working in a variety of locations and environments. Technology is pervasive and our technical interactions are migrating rapidly to mobile and hand-held devices, keeping us connected and able to work almost anywhere. This inevitably affects our posture and can lead to musculoskeletal issues in the longer term. Adopting the correct posture when sitting, standing and operating mobile devices aids the prevention and management of existing musculoskeletal problems. Regular stretching exercises are even more beneficial. Osmond Ergonomics provides support tools such as these free guides. -
Content ArticleHealth information technology (HIT) provides many benefits, but also facilitates certain types of errors, such as wrong-patient errors in which one patient is mistaken for another. These errors can have serious patient safety consequences and there has been significant effort to mitigate the risk of these errors through national patient safety goals, in-depth research, and the development of safety toolkits. Nonetheless, these errors persist.
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Content ArticleThis article from Peden et al. reviews of some of the key topics and challenges in quality, safety, and the measurement and improvement of outcomes in anaesthesia. Topics covered include medication safety, changes in approaches to patient safety, payment reform, longer term measurement of outcomes, large-scale improvement programmes, the ageing population, and burnout. The article begins with a section on the success of the specialty of anaesthesia in improving the quality, safety, and outcomes for our patients, and ends with a look to future developments, including greater use of technology and patient engagement.
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Content ArticleHealth information technology (HIT) provides many benefits, but also facilitates certain types of errors, such as wrong-patient errors in which one patient is mistaken for another. These errors can have serious patient safety consequences and there has been significant effort to mitigate the risk of these errors through national patient safety goals, in-depth research, and the development of safety toolkits. Nonetheless, these errors persist. Kim et al. analysed 1,189 patient safety event reports using a safety science and resilience engineering approach, which focuses on identifying processes to discover errors before they reach the patient so these processes can be expanded.They analysed the general care processes in which wrong-patient errors occurred, the clinical process step during which the error occurred and was discovered, and whether the error reached the patient. For those errors that reached the patient, they analysed the impact on the patient, and for those that did not reach the patient, they analysed how the error was caught.
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Content ArticleThe panel of this HSJ webinar explored how digital solutions might help clinicians improve patient safety and what barriers there might be along the way. In a debate chaired by HSJ contributor Claire Read, the panel explored how digital solutions might help clinicians improve patient safety and what barriers there might be along the way.
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Content ArticleThis Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) report charts the emerging patient safety risks that can come with the introduction of ‘smart’ infusion pump technology into hospitals. Smart infusion pumps are the latest generation of programmable devices that administer medication. They are seen as a way of improving safety as the smart functionality aims to prevent underdoses or overdoses – they are equipped with features such as alerts or alarms to help detect problems. The investigation was launched after one NHS Trust recorded three incidents where a smart infusion pump delivered an overdose of fentanyl, a powerful pain medication. The patients weren’t harmed as it was swiftly picked up, however it emphasised the new risks that come with introducing new technology and the potential for serious medication errors. The investigation focused on the barriers to implementing the technology effectively across the NHS, rather than on the technology itself.
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Content ArticleIn this 30 minute video presentation, we hear from Dr Victoria Brazil, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Simulation, Gold Coast Health Service. Dr Brazil talks through the benefits and complexities of simulation training using real life footage to illustrate key points. She suggests there are three ways healthcare can be improved using simulation: Simulation to explore Simulation to test Simulation to embed.
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Content ArticleBefore the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the subsequent pandemic, the health and care system had a poor track record in adopting digital technologies at scale. However, in response to the pandemic the healthcare system rapidly implemented new tools, many technology-based, to allow healthcare to be delivered when physical contact is not possible. The approach to using digital tools in health care provision is undergoing a substantial and rapid shift. Many of the technologies adopted during the first phase of the pandemic were already well established but not widely implemented; the maturity of the technology enabled the provision of healthcare through remote consultation to be much more prevalent much more quickly. Despite this recent rapid adoption of digital technologies, the health and care system remains at the early stages of digital health, with many tools replicating physical approaches and processes rather than taking advantage of what makes digital different.
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Content ArticleIn this blog for Patient Safety Movement, Pranjal Bora, Head of Product Management at Digital Authority Partners, looks at the ways in which digital technologies improve outcomes and safety in healthcare. The blog examines areas in which digital technologies are currently being used, and looks at the potential future uses of AI and other digital technologies.
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Content ArticleECRI’s Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2023 list identifies the potential sources of danger they believe warrant the greatest attention for the coming year and offers practical recommendations for reducing risks. Since its creation in 2008, this list has supported hospitals, health systems, ambulatory surgery centres, and manufacturers in addressing risks that can impact patients and staff. Their executive now includes specific calls to action for industry.
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Content ArticleTechnology holds promise for the future of healthcare. It can prevent illness, enable early diagnosis, empower health management and support general wellbeing. But how might people use technology to have more control over their health and wellbeing? And do they want to? This report explores the role of technology in managing, improving and supporting health and wellbeing. The NHS Confederation, in partnership with Google Health, commissioned Ipsos to explore people’s behaviours, attitudes and beliefs about responsibility and control when it comes to their health, the role that health technologies play in this and their expectations about the future of healthcare. A survey of more than 1,000 adults in the UK – a third of whom live with one or more long-term conditions (LTCs) – and interviews with individuals with LTCs and who have frequent interaction with the health system, forms the centrepiece of this report.
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Content ArticleIn spring 2021, YouTube asked the National Academy of Medicine to bring together experts to develop principles for elevating credible health information online. In this interview with The Commonwealth Fund, Garth Graham, YouTube’s director and global head of health care and public health partnerships talks about how YouTube—which reaches two billion people each month—has been working with health systems in the US to create high-quality, engaging health content.
