SIRch

Project timeframe
2020-21
Research area
Complex Systems
Amount awarded
Confidential
Funder ID
Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB)

Project leader: Dr Patrick Waterson

The main objective of this project was to carry out an assessment of the Serious Incident Research Framework and its suitability for incident classification and investigation in healthcare.

The project involved an analysis of 100 maternity investigation reports. At the start of the project LU and HSIB worked together to establish a common way of working through the reports and to discuss the various differences which existed in terms of coding. Later on a further 90 reports were coded using SIRch (50 by LU, 40 by HSIB).

The report also covers some considerations of how the outputs from SIRch might be further analysed using new methods from safety science (e.g., Bayesian Belief Networks) and artificial intelligence (e.g., machine learning). Our observations about general aspects of the investigation process (e.g., report structure and coverage; the use of systems maps) are also included within the report.