The inaugural Patient Safety Science & Technology Summit, held this week in Laguna Niguel, CA, made history when, for the first time, nine leading medical device companies publicly pledged to make their devices interoperable.
The pledges will make patient data collected and displayed on their devices accessible for patients and clinicians and launching a movement designed to reverse the rising tide of preventable patient deaths at US hospitals.
Cercacor, Cerner, Drager, GE Healthcare Systems, Masimo, Smiths Medical, Sonosite, Surgicount, and Zoll each announced pledges of interoperability and patient data accessibility during the Patient Safety Science & Technology Summit. The Summit attracted hundreds of doctors, hospital administrators, device makers, and patient advocates from across the world, and challenged healthcare leaders to pledge to take actionable, accountable measures toward zero preventable patient deaths.
When first identified more than 10 years ago in the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human," nearly 100,000 hospital patients were dying unnecessarily each year. The hospital death toll has doubled since then, with more than 200,000 preventable patient deaths annually.
