Technology and patient safety

Paul Johnson, Founder and CEO of Radar Healthcare, discusses how organisations can improve patient safety through technology

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines patient safety as the ‘reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with healthcare to an acceptable minimum’. Striving to embed patient safety within the culture of organisations has now become a significant concept for healthcare services across the globe in order to make a positive impact on the service and the care that they provide.

Patient safety failures are known to be extremely costly, dwarfing the costs of prevention. In the UK, of the entire healthcare budget for the NHS (National Health Service), clinical negligence claims have historically consumed about 2 per cent (BMJ). Therefore, if these were to be reduced, significant cost savings could be achieved.

Radar Healthcare works with several UK hospital trusts, aligning systems to create a single working interface that delivers both cost and time savings. User-friendly, compliant and transparent, it is a solution chosen most recently by Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, starting in April this year, to integrate their risk management so ware systems across the whole Trust.

A culture of safety

Health and care organisations across the world are facing the pressure of delivering high-quality, safe and e ective care to growing populations, with resources becoming increasingly stretched in an everchanging regulatory environment.

Radar Healthcare’s award-winning so ware takes a risk-based approach to managing quality and compliance. It supports the patient safety agenda and enhances health and care through comprehensive, innovative and personalised services that promote inclusivity and tolerance.

The Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative (PSFHI) was created by the WHO to help and support healthcare organisations to launch a cohesive patient safety programme. It looks at five main domains:

• leadership and management

• patient and public involvement

• safe evidence-based clinical practices

• safe environment

• and lifelong learning

Health organisations such as the WHO, National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF), the Joint Commission International (JCI), and the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI) are actively asking healthcare organisations to develop a culture of safety as an e ective strategy for improving patient safety.

The UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) has commissioned Radar Healthcare to deliver its quality and compliance so ware to 17 hospitals and 72 primary care centres across the region. The system, delivered by local partner Memits Solutions, supports them in delivering clinical incident reporting and patient safety outcomes.

Such advanced regulatory compliance so ware helps health and social care organisations to have full visibility of all compliance processes to stay on top of patient safety, learn from previous incidents and events, handle complaints and compliments, monitor workforce compliance, improve services to reduce the risk of reoccurrence, and more.

The economics of patient safety

A report by the OECD in 2017 entitled‘The Economics of Patient Safety’ strengthens a value-based approach to reducing patient harm at a national level. It highlighted that the 14th leading cause of the global disease burden (the impact of a health problem as measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators) is estimated to be patient harm, comparable to diseases like tuberculosis. In some countries, patient harm is an even larger burden, comparable to diseases such as multiple sclerosis and some types of cancer.

It is thought that in OECD countries, 15 per cent of hospital expenditure and activity are caused by treating safety failures. It is important to remember that there are knock-on e ects from adverse events, like the loss of trust in health systems. These issues are healthcare-associated infections (HAI), venous thromboembolism (VTE), pressure ulcers, medication error, and wrong or delayed diagnosis.

The reports identified that better policies and practices need to be in place to prevent harm and drive the quality improvement of care. Prevention programmes for issues such as HAI and VTE are much cheaper to run than paying for the financial burden they cause.

Fundamental system-level items should be invested in as a start, such as education, training, and safety standards, forming the foundation of a national value-based approach where harm is reduced using limited resources.

How technology can help improve patient safety

An integrated patient safety strategy involves adopting a positive safety culture for all involved. Clinical governanceframeworks are critical, as well as listening to the patients. A patient safety technology partner should provide the potential for continual improvements and sharing best practice.

Technology-powered healthcare can support the quest for excellence through incident management, risk management and audit management so ware, as well as quality improvement plans and workforce compliance. In this way healthcare providers can improve patient safety, reduce risks, know they are compliant, increase productivity and delivery of care through quality assurance and operational e iciency.

There is a real need for joined-up, automated, integrated data to be the driving force for this continuous improvement, influencing whether or not an organisation becomes a well-oiled machine. Intelligent analytics plays a huge role by enabling actions to be triggered directly from data, in real time, by monitoring data patterns and using this data to create events, automate notifications around concerns that need addressing, and improve operational intelligence across one or multiple organisations. It aligns with existing processes; it is interoperable and easy to use. Radar Healthcare is uniquely flexible to support quality, compliance and risk management in all areas of health and social care.