In an effort to help curb the number of health IT-related adverse events or errors, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released the Health IT Safety Center Roadmap.
Developed by nonprofit research organization RTI International with the input of a task force comprised of RTI-selected members, the roadmap outlines a five-year plan to develop a proposed National Health IT Safety Center. The Center's two key objectives would be using health IT to make care safety and continuously improving the safety of health IT.
The task force identified key focus areas for the Center, including developing solutions to address health IT-related safety events, improving the identification and sharing of information on health IT-related safety events, reporting evidence of health It safety and solutions and promoting health IT safety education and the appropriate use of health IT.
According to an ONC blog post by Andrew Gettinger, MD, ONC's CMIO and acting director of the Office of Clinical Quality and Safety, the task force did not deem the Center to be a regulatory body; rather, it was seen as a tool to promote health IT safety by gathering stakeholders and interested parties and spreading best practices.
"It is up to all of us who are working for the safe and secure use of health IT to move forward to a place where clinicians are not just satisfied with their work systems but where they couldn't possibly imagine providing clinical care without them," Dr. Gettinger wrote.
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