TY - JOUR
T1 - Some Unintended Consequences of Information Technology in Health Care
T2 - The Nature of Patient Care Information System-related Errors
AU - Ash, Joan S.
AU - Berg, Marc
AU - Coiera, Enrico
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by grant LM06942-02 from the National Library of Medicine. The authors appreciate the valuable contributions of Sophie Gosling and Johanna Westbrook from the Center for Health Informatics, University of New South Wales, who shared their Australian data, and Richard Dykstra, Lara Fournier, and Veena Seshadri of Oregon Health & Science University for analysis of U.S. data.
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - Medical error reduction is an international issue, as is the implementation of patient care information systems (PCISs) as a potential means to achieving it. As researchers conducting separate studies in the United States, The Netherlands, and Australia, using similar qualitative methods to investigate implementing PCISs, the authors have encountered many instances in which PCIS applications seem to foster errors rather than reduce their likelihood. The authors describe the kinds of silent errors they have witnessed and, from their different social science perspectives (information science, sociology, and cognitive science), they interpret the nature of these errors. The errors fall into two main categories: those in the process of entering and retrieving information, and those in the communication and coordination process that the PCIS is supposed to support. The authors believe that with a heightened awareness of these issues, informaticians can educate, design systems, implement, and conduct research in such a way that they might be able to avoid the unintended consequences of these subtle silent errors.
AB - Medical error reduction is an international issue, as is the implementation of patient care information systems (PCISs) as a potential means to achieving it. As researchers conducting separate studies in the United States, The Netherlands, and Australia, using similar qualitative methods to investigate implementing PCISs, the authors have encountered many instances in which PCIS applications seem to foster errors rather than reduce their likelihood. The authors describe the kinds of silent errors they have witnessed and, from their different social science perspectives (information science, sociology, and cognitive science), they interpret the nature of these errors. The errors fall into two main categories: those in the process of entering and retrieving information, and those in the communication and coordination process that the PCIS is supposed to support. The authors believe that with a heightened awareness of these issues, informaticians can educate, design systems, implement, and conduct research in such a way that they might be able to avoid the unintended consequences of these subtle silent errors.
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U2 - 10.1197/jamia.M1471
DO - 10.1197/jamia.M1471
M3 - Article
C2 - 14633936
AN - SCOPUS:1542327773
SN - 1067-5027
VL - 11
SP - 104
EP - 112
JO - Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
JF - Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
IS - 2
ER -