Seminar March 9: Problems with electronic interface between hospital clinics

Traditionally, laboratory test requests in hospitals were ordered on multi-part forms that required patient demographic information, clinical findings and reason for request to be handwritten. It was not unusual for transcription and transposition errors to be detected. On the other hand, electronic interfaces between hospital and laboratory information systems have also been reported to bring new sorts of errors, as Bridget Kane, who have made research at St James Hospital and Trinity College in Dublin, will discuss in this seminar.

There is potential for Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) to be incorporated into the Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system which adds clinical and economic value to the services.
However, it is a growing concern that implementation of these interfaces has revealed unintended consequences that compromise patient safety, and add significant cost to service provision. It is now recognised that following implementation, typically, the demand on services often rises significantly, without apparent clinical justi cation. It is reported that there are frequent failures in the follow-up on non-urgent clinically significant test results on ambulatory patients, and there is growing evidence of the negative impacts for patients when important results are not actioned.

Date: 2016-03-09
Time: 14:15 - 15:00 (there will be time for continued discussion after Bridget's presentation)
Room: Information System's coffee room 1A349