Communication of Critical Clinical Data

Service outages can be a significant source of risk particularly when systems are relied upon to deliver information which is used to support immediate care. System unavailability should be expected and planned for as no service is 100 % reliable. 

Healthcare organisations need to have business continuity plans in place and hosting organisations need tried and tested disaster recovery strategies. The existence of these plans and policies can be used to support the safety case. 

Sound architectural design is essential in eliminating single points of failure and in providing an appropriate level of redundancy. 

The technology supporting high reliability services is mature but this comes at a price. A balance needs to be struck between risk and cost. 

Users hnd slow performance of systems frustrating and in some cases clinicians may abandon use altogether. Hardware needs to be carefully specified, designed and monitored to ensure acceptable performance. 

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