IT Systems and Patient Safety

Large-scale IT systems (and some small-scale systems, as well) in healthcare settings can have beneficial effects on the provision of patient care and the quality of that care. Systems, being human artifacts, may include errors and thereby on occasion introduce risks. Computer systems can introduce different types of risks, and the incidence of risk can scale up very quickly. Causes of such human-generated or computer system risks can on occasion be opaque and difficult to track. Reproduced with permission of the publisher from Electronic Healthcare Law Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 2011.