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However, little work has examined the safety of the HIT systems themselves, the methods used in their development or the potential errors they may introduce into existing systems. This article introduces the conventional safety-related systems development standard IEC 61508 to the medical domain. It is proposed that the techniques used in conventional safety-related systems development should be utilised by regulation bodies, healthcare organisations and HIT developers to provide an assurance of safety for HIT systems. In adopting the IEC 61508 methodology for HIT development and integration, inherent problems in the new systems can be identified and corrected during their development. Also, IEC 61508 should be used to develop a healthcare-specific standard to allow stakeholders to provide an assurance of a system\u2019s safety.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/1460458211432587","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2012,3,24]],"date-time":"2012-03-24T02:49:43Z","timestamp":1332557383000},"page":"36-49","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Functional safety of health information technology"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"18","author":[{"given":"Liam","family":"Chadwick","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"National University of Ireland, Ireland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Enda F.","family":"Fallon","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National University of Ireland, Ireland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Wil J.","family":"van der Putten","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National University of Ireland, Ireland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Frank","family":"Kirrane","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Galway University Hospital, Ireland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2012,3,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_3_2_2","volume-title":"To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System","author":"Kohn KT","year":"1999","unstructured":"Kohn KT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS(eds). 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