This review might be useful for clinicians and healthcare policy makers when making evidence based decisions on procurement and implementation of such technology to improve patient safety. This review is intended to summarize the current available scientific evidence on the impact of different health information technologies on improving patient safety outcomes. Since the original IOM report was published, there has been an accelerated development and adoption of health information technology with varying degrees of evidence about the impact of health information technology on patient safety. Health information technology presents numerous opportunities for improving and transforming healthcare which includes reducing human errors, improving clinical outcomes, facilitating care coordination, improving practice efficiencies, and tracking data over time. Health information technology includes various technologies that span from simple charting, to more advanced decision support and integration with medical technology. Healthcare information technology (HIT) has been defined as “the application of information processing involving both computer hardware and software that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision making”. 1 In 1999 the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report “To err is human” called for developing and testing new technologies to reduce medical error, 2 and the subsequent 2001 report “crossing the quality chiasm” called for using information technology as a key first step in transforming and changing the healthcare environment to achieve better and safer care. Patient safety is a subset of healthcare and is defined as the avoidance, prevention, and amelioration of adverse outcomes or injuries stemming from the processes of health care.
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