AHRQ Patient Safety Network ► Making healthcare safer by understanding, designing and buying better IT.

AHRQ Patient Safety Network





Making healthcare safer by understanding, designing and buying better IT.

Thimbleby H, Lewis A, Williams J. Clin Med. 2015;15:258-262.

Design weaknesses for medical devices can remain unrecognized due to insufficient reporting and the tendency to place blame on the user rather than question whether the equipment functioned appropriately. Discussing flaws in health IT design and how they can contribute to patient harm, this commentary advocates for enhanced reporting of device-related incidents to raise awareness about risks and enable learning from errors.

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