Using portable digital technology for clinical care and critical incidents: a new model

Abstract

The number of patients suffering adverse incidents during treatment in hospitals is not declining. The cost of this poor safety record in Australia is $1 billion to $4.7 billion each year. Quality and safety initiatives focus on promoting adverse event reporting. Major problems include poor reporting of adverse events and lack of clinician involvement. We propose a model for clinician-led reporting based on secure transmission of encrypted data from a programmed personal digital assistant (PDA) to a secure database, leading to automated analysis of clinician-performance data. The programmed PDA also facilitates the reporting of critical incidents. All critical incidents are automatically fed back by email to the organisational quality managers.