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ECRI releases 2018 list of top health tech hazards

Hospital Safety Insider, November 9, 2017

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The ECRI Institute has published its annual list of top healthcare technology hazards for the upcoming year. The Institute publishes the list to highlight and educate healthcare workers on various dangers affecting patients. The list includes guidance on how to effectively respond to these concerns, along with implementing priorities and corrective action plans. This year the list includes:

1.    Ransomware and cybersecurity
2.    Endoscope reprocessing failures causing infections
3.    Mattress and mattress cover contamination causing infections
4.    Missed alarms due to badly configured secondary alarm notification systems
5.    Improper cleaning and device failures
6.    Burns from upholstered electrosurgical active electrodes
7.    Inadequate use of digital imaging tools to reduce radiation exposure
8.    Bar-coded medication administration system workarounds
9.    Medical device networking errors
10.    Enteral feeding misconnections

“All the topics we select for the list must, to some degree, be preventable,” ECRI wrote. “But any one of the other criteria can, on its own, warrant including a topic on the list. We encourage readers to examine these same factors when judging the criticality of these and other hazards at their own facilities.”

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