Medical Safety
Medical errors cause approximately 98,000 patients to die each year.
An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report suggests that the delivery of
healthcare must fundamentally change to address medical error. In particular,
it is now widely recognized that medical errors result from system
rather than individual failures, leading the IOM report to advocate
the development of healthcare systems that directly address patient
safety. In particular, the IOM report states, "what is most disturbing
is the absence of real progress… in information technology to
improve clinical processes."
To address this concern, we have begun to investigate how current
research in process definition and execution and in software verification
and analysis can be applied and extended to help reduce errors and
improve safety and efficiency in medical processes. In particular,
we are exploring how to extend some current software engineering research
techniques to define, monitor, coordinate, analyze, and improve the
safety and efficiency of medical processes. Working with experts on
medical safety and building upon our experience with process languages
and with system verification and analysis, we plan to develop visual
process representations for critical paths of care that capture, not
only the standard paths, but also describe the exceptional situations
that can arise and the inherent concurrency and multi-tasking frequently
undertaken by extremely busy healthcare providers, and to provide the
basis for careful analysis and evaluation leading to safety and efficiency
improvements
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