JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Several large surgical complication reporting systems and system-based interventions have been developed and have made remarkable progress in the past two decades. However, these have either mainly focused on reporting complications, and played a limited role in guiding practice, or have provided non-selective interventions to all patients, perhaps imposing unnecessary burdens on frontline medical staff. We have therefore developed an evidence-based stratified surgical safety information system based on a multi-center surgical safety improvement program. This article discusses some critical issues in the process of developing this information system, including (1) decisions about data gathering; (2) establishing and sharing knowledge; (3) developing functions for the system; (4) system implementation; and (5) evaluation and continuous improvement. Using examples drawn from above mentioned surgical safety improvement program, we have shown how this type of system can be fitted into day-to-day clinical practice and how it can guide medical practice by incorporating inherent patient-related risk, and providing tailored interventions for patients with different levels of risk. We concluded that multidisciplinary collaboration, including experts in the fields of healthcare (including senior staff in surgery, nursing and anesthesia), data science, healthcare management and health IT, can help to build an evidence-based stratified surgical patient safety improvement system. This can provide an information-intensified surgical safety learning platform and therefore benefit surgical patients by delivering tailored interventions, and an integrated workflow.