title: Institutional decision-making for medical device purchasing: evaluating patient safety.
abstract: Many medical devices that are currently on the market are sub-optimal for human use, thus contributing to medical errors. This places significant responsibility for device selection on purchasers. This paper describes a retrospective analysis of decision making processes for infusion pump selection in three large hospitals and focuses on patient safety. Through a series of detailed interviews and a study of relevant documentation we characterized the nature of the decision-making, patterns of communication, and the roles of different participants. Findings suggest that success of the process is related to effective communication among participants with different expertise and adequate device usability assessment during the process. The paper discusses how information technology could provide support to distributed institutional decision making.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Decision-making and Cognition, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032-372, USA. alla.keselman@dbmi.columbia.edu
authors.forename: Alla
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Keselman
authors.forename: Xiaozhou
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Vimla L
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.forename: Todd R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Jialie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D004869:Equipment Safety; D006804:Ergonomics; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006801:Humans; D007260:Infusion Pumps; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D017751:Safety Management / Q000379:methods*; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical