The Hard Work Behind Technology

The Problem

Vanderbilt's project didn't address a problem so much as it focused on a goal: to become the safest hospital in the United States. It decided to focus on medication errors, which harm at least 1.5 million patients in U.S. hospitals each year and cost $3.5 billion annually, the IOM estimates.

The Solution

Vanderbilt was an early adopter of computerized provider order entry, building its own system in 1994, to attack the biggest contributor to medication errors: illegible or incorrectly written prescriptions. After a number of years working with that system, Vanderbilt officials decided it was time to focus on the next biggest contributor to errors—medication administration errors—by implementing a bar coding system. Officials committed to this in 2006, when a majority of drugs finally carried bar codes on their labels.