The opportunity

CGI’s Patient Safety Service (PSS) can scan thousands of patient charts in an instant, analyzing a massive amount of patient data. Using natural language processing, PSS detects potential adverse events which, once confirmed, collected, analyzed and acted upon, can change healthcare systems and save lives.

The problem

Healthcare providers are not always able to identify when adverse events occur. Individuals receiving care often are very sick, and what looks like an adverse event could be a natural consequence of a disease. Alternately, what looks like a natural disease consequence could be the result of a procedure performed incorrectly or at the wrong time.

The solution

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Global Trigger Tool (GTT) is the basis for the PSS analytics engine. The GTT provides an especially valuable supplement to the traditional adverse event detection methods (e.g., voluntary reporting, chart audits, failure modes and effects analysis, and root cause analysis). Its key advantages include the ability to measure the rate of harm over time and to identify adverse events not detected using traditional methods.

Key benefits

  • Provides a comprehensive view of possible adverse events that can be classified and reported
  • Allows patient safety efforts to focus on the most common and/or serious adverse events
  • Enables an organization’s rate of harm to be tracked over time; less harm means fewer complications, better care and lower costs
  • Improves sustainability through continuous improvement as harm is identified, analyzed and further reduced with each iteration
  • Allows safety interventions to be tracked to determine if process changes result in improvements