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To Reduce Medical Errors, Rely on Technology

The arrival of such technology is significant to the country since the UAE Ministry of Health has made recent technological advancements in the field and launched the patient health information system, Wareed.

Wareed encompasses modernization of computer equipment and office applications across all the medical facilities. It also allows paramedical staff to gain instant access to critical and up-to-date patient history during a crisis, improve communication with physicians and other healthcare facilities, and reduces incidences of medical errors as patients’ data is captured, stored and retrieved more accurately.

Medical errors claimed the lives of eight patients between 2006 and 2007 while the cost of rectifying these errors is seven times the cost of scheduled or routine treatment. A rough estimate calculates the direct cost of errors as Dh280 million, while the indirect cost is Dh3 billion a year, according to the MoH.

“Advanced technology is essential to managing patient safety needs, especially when it comes to preventing medication errors,” said Mark Harvie, Director, Marketing, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Hospira, a global specialty pharmaceutical and medication delivery company.

Three integrated products that help reduce human error, costs and increase productivity of patient care are among those being launched. “Governments in the US, Australia, Canada and Saudi Arabia and 350 hospitals globally are already successfully using the systems,” says Harvie. “The technology can make administration of medicines safer by use of pre-programmed settings in dosing and clinical and safety guidelines,” he explains, adding that the systems are tailor-made for each hospital and department settings.

The technology also effectively manages the patient data, giving regular updates to the care-provider.

Globally, it is estimated that one in 10 patients in hospitals are potentially exposed to safety issues. According to the US Institute of Medicine, 1.5 million patients in the US report medication errors while about 1/3 (400,000) of these errors could be preventable through adoption of technology.

According to data from the National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom, as many as 12 per cent of patients are exposed to an adverse drug event or potential event, with 51 per cent of these incidences occurring at administration stage of medication delivery.

An NHS study also reports the most frequently occurring types of medication errors are: wrong dose, frequency or strength of medicine, omitted medicine, or wrong medicine. The rate of medical errors in the UAE is not more than 1.5 per cent of the total number of cases handled though the cost of rectifying them is seven times the cost of scheduled or routine treatment, says UAE Minister of Health, Humaid Mohammed Obaid Al Quttami.

To curb such incidences, the UAE is also in the process of issuing a federal Medical Liability Law which contains and defines all medical practices, and pinpoints precisely the kind of medical accountability and, the plausible punishment against the offenders. The statute also ensures the patients of their rights for compensations in medical errors. However, experts feel that medical errors in the UAE continue to go underreported, affecting the quality of healthcare delivery and decreasing patients’ confidence in hospitals and clinics across the country.

asmaalizain@khaleejtimes.com

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