Managing the patient safety risks of bottom-up health information technology innovations : recommendations for healthcare providers

Health information technology (IT) offers exciting opportunities for providing novel services to patients, and for improving the quality and safety of care. However, the introduction of IT can lead to unintended consequences, and create opportunities for failure, which can have significant effects on patient safety. In this paper I argue that many health IT patient safety risks are probably quite predictable, but are often not considered at the time. This puts patients at risk, and it threatens the successful adoption of health IT. I recommend that healthcare providers focus on strengthening their processes for organisational learning, promote proactive risk management strategies, and make risk management decisions transparent and explicit