Connecting the Dots for ZERO Preventable Patient Deaths by 2020

A disconnected understanding of the patient and appropriate care pathway has a devastating impact in both lives and costs. Saving lives and helping to prevent the more than 200,000 preventable patient deaths each year can largely be addressed by connecting the dots between current processes and procedures and proven solutions that are available today.

By bringing the medical technologies and IT infrastructure together with relevant information, intelligent and predictive algorithms, and decision support that facilitate process of care improvements, physicians and patients could be informed of dangerous trends, lives could be saved, and costs could be dramatically reduced. Getting to ZERO will take all of us working together – clinicians, administrators, medical technology companies, payers, government, and patients.

The Time is Now

It is imperative that we no longer wait to lead the way for uncompromising patient care, patient safety, and patient dignity. That is what the medical technology industry is all about. However, for us to truly succeed in advancing patient safety, we must work together toward a common goal:

...ZERO preventable deaths by 2020.

To help meet this goal, the Patient Safety, Science & Technology Movement and its annual Summit will unite and educate the healthcare industry toward actionable solutions to the patient safety and cost challenges we face. In doing this, we can help to create a world where patients can avoid preventable deaths and injuries and get to ZERO by 2020.

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  • Joe Kiani, Founder, The Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit & Movement

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Committed Partners

Make a Pledge & Join the Challenge Today!

The inaugural Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit held January 13th and 14th made history. For the first time, nine leading medical device companies publicly pledged to make their devices interoperable and scores of attendees made commitments as well to improve patient safety in their chosen way. Our goal is to go from 200,000+ preventable patient deaths a year to ZERO by 2020. In order to do that, we need to get to zero preventable deaths one hospital at a time. So each of your hospitals must try to be the first.

If you or your organization would like to accept the challenge and make a pledge to improve patient safety, please complete form below and email it to: Commitments@patientsafetysummit.org. I know, with your help, we can do this!

Commitment To Action Form

Help make change possible by committing to improve patient safety in your own unique way.

When first identified more than 10 years ago in the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human," nearly 100,000 hospital patients were dying unnecessarily each year. The hospital death toll has doubled since then, with more than 200,000 preventable patient deaths annually.1, 2 Alarmed, Joe Kiani, founder and Chairman of the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation & Competition in Healthcare, and the CEO of medical device company Masimo, created the Patient Safety Science & Technology Summit to bring visionary minds together to solve the patient safety problems we collectively face by connecting people, ideas and technologies.

"My fellow medtech CEOs have taken patient safety to heart in a way that this industry has never done before," Kiani said. "I am proud to be standing with these eight other pioneers as we break down the walls of data ownership to empower patients and clinicians with device interoperability, information, and technology integration that will save lives and reduce costs. As other medical technology leaders become aware of what we have begun to accomplish, we look forward to announcing more companies committed to the same objective."

Peter Provonost, Sr. Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine and Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, applauded the medical device companies for making public pledges.

"Thanks to these courageous leaders who have made public pledges, patients around the globe will be safer," Pronovost said. "These companies are blazing a trail in the name of patient safety and dignity — a move that will elevate their standing in the medical community as well as the market."

  1. Daniel R. Levinson, Adverse Events in Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Beneficiaries, Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, November 2010.
  2. Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson M, eds. To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine; 1999, p. 1.