Toward effective concept representation in decision support to improve patient safety

• Main Author: Tze-Yun LEONG
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
• Subjects: Concept formation; Decision support system; Editorial; Health care quality; Human; Medical error; Safety; Medicine and Health Sciences; Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3047; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4047/viewcontent/mim_2010_49_6_15464.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Patient safety is an emerging, major health care discipline with significance accentuated in the influential Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports in the United States “To Err is Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm”. These reports highlighted the danger and prevalence of medical errors and preventable adverse events, explained the three main sources of system-related, human factors-related and cognitive-related errors, and recommended the use of information and decision support technologies to help alleviate the problem. A number of studies and reports from all over the world with similar findings have since followed, culminating in the 55th World Health Assembly Resolution on Patient Safety and the 58th World Health Assembly Resolution on eHealth. These efforts initiated a global mandate to improve patient safety in health care; one of the critical strategies identified is to adopt and apply effective and efficient information technology (IT) solutions and clinical decision support technologies.