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SAFER?

December 13, 2021 -- The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, funded by the HITECH Act under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has released the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides by Sittig et al, 2014. That's a mouthful but an important one.

Health information technology (HIT) -- most notably electronic health records (EHRs) -- is as vulnerable to cyberattack as any other industry, several of which have recently sustained horrific and highly damaging assaults from miscreants domestic and foreign. Government systems as well as private enterprise (for example, earlier this year, hackers shut down the Colonial Pipeline) have been attacked. Health care institutions, too, are not immune.

Why fret about this here? Because nurse informaticists need education, skills, and action to confront these threats. The SAFER Guides outline approaches to informatics responsibilties including:

  • High Priority Practices
  • Organizational Responsibilities
  • Infrastructure Design and Management
  • Contingency Planning
  • System Configuration
  • System Interfaces
  • Clinical Processes
  • Patient Identification
  • Computerized Provider Order Entry
  • Decision Support
  • Test Results Reporting and Follow-Up
  • Clinician Communication
A video introduction to these issues is available. Watch it! "The SAFER Guides are self-assessment tools to help you and your team identify these risks and mitigate them." And get smart about health data security.

Go nursing informatics security experts!