Biomedical Informatics 4th Edition by Edward Shortliffe, James Cimino

Exercise 5

In 2000, a major report by the Institute of Medicine entitled "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System" (see Suggested Readings) stated that up to 98,000 patient deaths are caused by pre ventable medical errors in American hospitals each year.
(a) It has been suggested that electronic health record (EHR) systems should be used to address this problem. What are three specific ways in which they could reduce the num ber of adverse events in hospitals?
(b) Are there ways in which computer based systems could increase the incidence of medical errors? Explain.
(c) Describe a practical experiment that could be used to examine the impact of an EHR system on patient safety. In other words, the study design should address whether the com puter-based system increases or decreases the incidence of prevent able adverse events in hospitals - and by how much.
(d) What are the limitations of the experimental design you proposed in (c)?