Patient safety should be at the core of our approach to health and care. The Association of British HealthTech Industries’ Patient Safety Group believes that industry can, and must, play a key role in ensuring this. To support this, the association has partnered with Patient Safety Learning to develop a new white paper tackling the key issues. ABHI’s Jonathan Evans provides an overview.
Despite decades of awareness, patient safety remains one of the most persistent and troubling challenges facing healthcare systems. Patients rightly expect safe, effective and compassionate care, yet avoidable harm continues to occur at scale, often with devastating consequences for individuals, families and healthcare professionals. Globally, patient safety incidents represent one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, despite a significant proportion being preventable.
In England, estimates suggest that around one in ten patients experiences harm during hospital care, with approximately half of these incidents deemed avoidable. The financial cost is equally stark. In high-income countries, unsafe care accounts for close to 9% of total health expenditure, diverting billions of pounds away from frontline services.
However, focusing solely on cost risks missing the wider picture; every incident of avoidable harm represents a failure of the system to protect those it exists to serve.
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