Data Driven Patient Safety and Clinical Information Technology

Healthcare information technology has improved the business of healthcare with mixed results for its impact on the delivery of care itself. As industry and regulatory pressures to improve the quality and safety of care through the reduction of preventable harms, it becomes imperative to align information systems to (a) collect real-time clinical data with patient care workflows and (b) provide quality and patient safety teams (and other stakeholders) easy access to meaningful process and outcomes data. To accomplish this, hospitals and other healthcare organizations must adopt emerging practices from the science of high reliability organizations (HROs). In addition, they must employ and adapt clinical IT systems to facilitate real-time collection, analysis and feedback of performance (on multiple levels) with data directly from care. An example, Project Emerge, from the Johns Hopkins Hospital, is presented.