Lessons for Information Technology from the Boston Marathon Bombings

Disaster drills are not just about teamwork and hazmat suits anymore.

Investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston conducted structured debriefings to learn from the experience of the hospital's response to the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013. Debriefings included brief, informal sessions very early after the event, called “hot washes” after the military practice of quickly cleaning one's weapon immediately after use, and more structured formal analyses, called “after-action reviews” in standard disaster-preparedness parlance.

One component of this process was an analysis of what worked and what didn't work regarding emergency department and hospital information systems. Among the many lessons learned is that the naming conventions used for unidentified patients made it difficult to disting…

Reviewing Author

Daniel J. Pallin, MD, MPH

Disclosures

Consultant/Advisory BoardPortola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Speaker’s BureauPeerView Institute for Medical Education

Grant/Research SupportAgency for Healthcare Research and Quality; CDC; NIH–National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; NIH–National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); NIH–NIAID–Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group; Merck; Pfizer; Boehringer-Ingelheim; Shire; Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Novartis; bioMérieux; Siemens; Rapid Pathogen Screening; Magnolia; Stago; Innovative Biosensors; Molecular Detection, Inc.; Dyax Corp.; Trius Pharmaceuticals

Daniel J. Pallin, MD, MPH

Disclosures

Consultant/Advisory BoardPortola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Speaker’s BureauPeerView Institute for Medical Education

Lessons for Information Technology from the Boston Marathon Bombings

Topics

Reviewing Author