Errors in Remote Healthcare System: Where, How and by Whom?

A medical error comes in many forms e.g. Medication error, Surgical error, Diagnostic error and System failure etc. The Prescription error is a major medication error. Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) and Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) have been developed and deployed by many hospitals to prevent medical errors. However, these tools are more applicable for hospitalized patients. In healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, a healthcare worker interfaces with the patient and do medical measurement of health checkup items (for example, height, weight, Blood sugar etc.) and shares the data by using an android based application with the remote doctor. The doctor analyzes the data, consults with the patient and writes a prescription for the patient. In this overall process, each step has the room for making mistakes and eventually mistakes bring errors, either directly by a human (active error) or by the android application or hardware (latent error). This paper reports a flow chart for healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, lists the point of errors and describe the potential causes of the errors.