Patient Safety Informatics: Criteria Development for Assessing the Maturity of Digital Patient Safety in Hospitals

Abstract

With the start of the 21st century, patient safety as a topic of special interest has attracted increasing attention in both academia and clinical practice. As technology has continued to develop since then, questions and focal points surrounding the topic have also shifted. In particular, questions regarding the impact of digitalization on patient safety and its measurement are now of high interest. This work aims to develop a maturity assessment instrument in the form of a criteria set for measuring structural requirements for digital patient safety in hospitals. Based on the results of a literature review and a derivation of maturity objects (MO) from known maturity models, 64 criteria across 11 categories were developed. Written comments of two digital patient safety experts as well as subsequent interviews were used to evaluate and refine the criteria catalog. The resulting catalog offers hospitals guidance for detecting possible areas of structural improvements in their information systems with regard to patient safety and represents a unique instrument for assessing digital maturity in this particular area.