Assessing Changing Risks in Healt Care

In this presentation we argue that technological changes currently introduced into the health care sector in Finland pose a challenge for patient safety. New technology changes both the formal and informal practices of patient care and this raise the question: Do the technological changes in health care organizations create new vulnerabilities into the system? How can these be identified? Formal qualitative risk assessments aim to identify the relevant risks related to a specific target and to mitigate the risks to an acceptable level. They have been used in various industries but seldom in assessing patient safety risks. The presentation presents results from three case studies where the aim was to analyze patient safety risks of a change situation. The objective of this paper is to clarify the applicability of qualitative risk assessment for identifying risks associated with technological changes in health care.