Posted October 24, 2007
Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare: News
WHO Alliance for Patient Safety Establishes Research Priorities
Boston, MA, October 3, 2007 — The World Health Organization's (WHO) World Alliance for Patient Safety has identified 23 research priorities. The Global Priority Areas for Research on Patient Safety are being launched at the conference of the International Society for Quality in Health Care Inc. (ISQua) held in Boston September 30 ‚ October 3.
Research is required in many areas, but resources are scarce, therefore priority setting is important to ensure that the best and most useful projects are funded, balancing local requirements with global needs. The WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety has established a global research agenda through a priority setting process involving a number of relevant constituencies worldwide.
WHO convened an international expert working — group to identify global priorities using a four — stage, modified Delphi process. Although some priorities were common to developing country, transitional country and developed country contexts, developing countries had specific research priorities relating to the adaptation and development of locally effective solutions and to areas such as counterfeit and substandard drugs, injection safety and blood safety. Developed countries place more focus on cultural and latent organizational factors.
The first Expert Consultation for priority setting took place at WHO headquarters, Geneva, in July 2006. Twenty experts from six continents decided to rank projects according to the frequency of the safety issue, the magnitude of harm and its distribution within the population, the impact on the efficiency of the health system, the feasibility and sustainability of solutions, and the urgency or political backing required to address the problem.
For the next 7 months, the group worked in establishing the most relevant patient safety issues and identifying main research gaps. In February 2007, the second Expert Consultation focused in finalizing the ranking process. Altogether, 23 topics were ordered according to structural issues, process issues and outcome measures. As ranking varied from one set of countries to another, the group decided that the ranking process should be reviewed on a regular basis and that countries should be given the possibility to re — rank according to their own priorities. However, the experts underlined that research priorities (i.e. where research is needed) should not be confused with the inherent importance of the topics or study areas.
More information is available at www.who.int/patientsafety/research/activities/priority_setting/en/index.html
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