Digital clinical technologies hold promise for care improvement while contributing to potential failures due to the lack of collective guidance to assess and measure if they are safe. This document provides background on digital safety. It shares an approach that aligns with the United Kingdom system safety strategy to situate its priorities and support the strategy.

Design flaws and improper use of technologies that transfer medication and prescription information between provider environments is a known threat to patient safety. This report analyzes an anticoagulant overdose incident and found that information technology missteps contributed to the error.

Challenges associated with electronic health record design and implementation contribute to interruptions, workarounds, and information overload. This book explores topics relevant to workflow disruptions that can degrade safe practice. The chapters review strategies such as data analysis techniques and human factors engineering to generate improvements.

Information technology is prevalent in health care and is associated with both optimized processes and unintended consequences. This publication is a compilation of papers from an international conference that explored the potential of health information technology and the research needed to achieve success. Topics covered include usability, implementation, interoperability, and policy.