Computerized surveillance for adverse drug events in a pediatric hospital.

There are limited data on adverse drug event rates in pediatrics. The authors describe the implementation and evaluation of an automated surveillance system modified to detect adverse drug events (ADEs) in pediatric patients. The authors constructed an automated surveillance system to screen admissions to a large pediatric hospital.

Natural language processing to identify adverse drug events.

We tested and adapted Cancer Text Information Extraction System (caTIES), a publicly available natural language processing tool (NLP), as a method for identifying terms suggestive of adverse drug events (ADEs). Although caTIES was intended to extract concepts from surgical pathology reports, we report that it can successfully be used to search for ADEs on a much broader range of documents.

Computerized surveillance for adverse drug events in a pediatric hospital.

Adverse drug event (ADE) surveillance is needed to inform processes and methods for prevention. Voluntary reporting and manual chart review have limitations. Automated surveillance systems are gaining recognition and provide useful information to supplement the other methods.

The informatics opportunities at the intersection of patient safety and clinical informatics.

Health care providers have a basic responsibility to protect patients from accidental harm. At the institutional level, creating safe health care organizations necessitates a systematic approach. Effective use of informatics to enhance safety requires the establishment and use of standards for concept definitions and for data exchange, development of acceptable models for knowledge representation, incentives for adoption of electronic health records, support for adverse event detection and reporting, and greater investment in research at the intersection of informatics and patient safety.

Automated surveillance for adverse drug events at a community hospital and an academic medical center.

Objectives: To compare the rates and nature of ADEs at an academic medical center and a community hospital using a single computerized ADE surveillance system.

Design: Prospective cohort study of patients admitted to two tertiary care hospitals. Outcome Measure Adverse drug events identified by automated surveillance and voluntary reporting.

The roles and responsibility of physicians to improve patient safety within health care delivery systems.

A steady stream of high-visibility medical accidents keeps patient safety on the front page of health care. Controversy about the exact size of the medical error problem continues, but there is little debate about the enormous opportunity for improvement in the safety and reliability of health care. Anesthesia-related deaths have declined from as many as 50 to just 3.