5 major threats to the health of patients in 2019

Independent experts from ECRI (EmergencyCareResearchInstitute) made a list of the main potential threats to the safety of patients in 2019. According to experts, the greatest danger to the health and welfare of patients people represent the actions of hackers.

In 2019, health care providers should pay particularly close attention to cybersecurity issues. According to the ECRI experts, specialized on research in the area of improving healthcare technology, the actions of hackers increasingly lead to failures in work of information systems medical clininc and institutions – over the past 1.5 years such hacking activity became much more intense.

Threaten the health of patients and hospital mattresses. Moreover, real hard: their experts have been placed on the second place ranking. Experts pointed out that the hospital mattresses are not thoroughly processed and purified from various biological fluids, subject to different patients. All of this carries a risk of infection a number of infections, experts say.

In addition, the rating of the main threats to the health of the patients included surgical sponge forgotten in the bodies of people after surgeries. Posledstviyami forgetfulness – re-operation and complications of varying severity.

Misconfigured sensitive medical equipment can also harm patients. Fourth place in this ranking took the errors in the signals setup in the devices of the ALV (artificial lung ventilation). Any such error may result in the case of hypoxia and death.

Another threat research experts saw the medical procedures using flexible endoscopes. Experts explained that for the disinfection of such devices must be carefully respected, particular technology, which is often neglected. As a consequence, from patient to patient can quickly be transmitted by a different infection.

Earlier Magicforum wrote about the ten most common causes of human deaths in the world.