A knowledge-based framework for clinical incident management

摘要

Clinical incidents, which occur during the provision of health care, can be costly and deadly. Over three-quarter of these incidents is preventable according to the studies in general practice in Australia (Bhasale, A., Miller, G., Reid, S., & Britt, H., (1998). Analysing potential harm in Australian general practice: an incident-monitoring study. MJA, 169, 73–76). It is important that we learn as much as possible from these incidents to prevent them in the future and improve quality of care. This paper introduces a holistic system, which amalgamates case-based reasoning, rule-based reasoning, causal-based reasoning and an ontological knowledge base for managing clinical incidents in general practice. Clinical incident management includes incident analysis, incident case browsing, statistics and explanation. The system enables health professionals to share the medical incident information, which has caused harm and can cause potential harm. The re-use of such information may prevent or mitigate human or medical errors. Such a hybrid approach provides an effective management of adverse clinical incidents for quality improvement in General Practice.