Technological Innovations,

Handwritten reports or notes, manual order entry, non-standard abbreviations and poor legibility lead to substantial errors and injuries, according to the Institute of Medicine (2000) report. The follow-up IOM (2004) report, Crossing the quality chasm: A new health system for the 21st century, advised rapid adoption of electronic patient records, electronic medication ordering, with computer- and internet-based information systems to support clinical decisions. However, many system implementations have experienced costly failures (Ammenwerth et al., 2006). Furthermore, there is evidence that CPOE may actually contribute to some types of adverse events and other medical errors.(Campbell et al., 2007) For example, the period immediately following CPOE implementation resulted in significant increases in reported adverse drug events in at least one study (Bradley, Steltenkamp, & Hite, 2006) and evidence of other errors have been reported.(Bates, 2005a; Bates, Leape, Cullen, & Laird, 1998; Bates; 2005b) Collectively, these reported adverse events describe phenomena related to the disruption of the complex adaptive system resulting from poorly implemented or inadequately planned technological innovation.