Patient Safety Incident Management Software Eliminating Preventable Harm in Health Care

Patient Safety International (PSI) provides patient safety software including the AIMS system for incident management that is based on extensive research and field experience - to reduce harm in the delivery of patient care.

Global studies show that the cost of errors and accidents in health care exceeds 5% of overall health spending. This does not include the significant human costs for those who suffer harm, the people who care for them and those who provide health care¹. Alarmingly, one in ten admissions to an acute care hospital is associated with an adverse event and one in five of these contribute substantially to major disability (1.7% of admissions) or death (0.3% of admissions)².

Since eighty percent of adverse events are considered preventable³, an understanding of the underlying causes of medical errors and decisive corrective action can lead to significant savings in both healthcare expenditures and human costs. In Australia alone, the potential annual savings are estimated at $2 billion AUD1.

Patient Safety Internationals AIMS software enhances efficiency and quality by providing a single point of data entry to capture, classify, manage and analyse safety and quality information. Unlike other systems, AIMS provides detail on why and how problems occur - powerful knowledge in the development of interventions.


To enable comprehensive analysis, data is collected and structured in a consistent and accurate manner using the AIMS HIT-Classification^TM. The AIMS system is based on the Reason⁴ model of complex system failure and is unique in its ability to collect safety and quality data across large health care environments. The AIMS classification now forms the basis of the soon to be released World Health Organization (WHO) International Patient Safety Event Classification.

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¹ Runciman WB, Moller J, Iatrogenic Injury in Australia, 2001
² Runciman WB, Webb RK, Helps SC, Thomas EJ, Sexton EJ, Studdert DM et al, A comparison of iatrogenic injury studies in Australia and the USA II: reviewer behaviour and quality of care. Int J Qual Health Care 2000 (12(5):379-388).
³ Wilson RMcL, Runciman WB, Gibberd RW, et al. The Quality in Australian Healthcare Study, The Medical Journal of Australia, 1995, 163 (9):458-471.
⁴ Reason J. The contribution of latent human failures to the breakdown of complex systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London , 1990, 327:473-484.