The following statement was released today by Douglas B. Fridsma, MD, PhD, FACP, FACMI, AMIA President and CEO:
AMIA and the informatics community support the “Everybody has Responsibilities” campaign, which highlights the ongoing need to ensure the safety and safe use of health IT.
As articulated in our Health IT Safety Policy Principles, AMIA believes that assuring the safe use and general safety of health IT is a shared responsibility among oversight bodies, developers, implementers, organizations, hospitals, practices, users, and patients.
We have a fractured and loosely connected system to understand when health IT negatively impacts patient care, how such harms could have been avoided, and what changes to usability, design, and implementation are necessary to mitigate such shortcomings in the future. This inability to understand how health IT impacts safety across settings of care is why AMIA supports the establishment of a national public/private center, or collaborative, on health IT safety meant to convene, analyze and disseminate information to improve the safety and safe use of health IT.
We hope this campaign educates stakeholders and encourages action to prioritize better health IT usability and to make health IT safer for patient care.
Join AMIA in supporting these efforts by signing the letter to Congress.