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According to industry estimates, there were ~421 million hospitalizations in 2019, globally, in which nearly 42.7 million healthcare adverse events occurred. At a global level, four out of 10 patients experience harm of some sort in primary and outpatient clinics. Moreover, out of 100 hospitalized patients, seven in high-income countries (HICs) and 10 in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) are affected by one or more healthcare-acquired infections, which can even lead to death. Unsafe medication practices that lead to errors, such as incorrect medication dosages or infusions, use of abbreviations and jargon, unclear instructions, and inappropriate prescriptions, are leading causes of preventable PSEs in healthcare worldwide. In order to tackle this challenge, medtech companies around the world are innovating and introducing next-gen solutions to address the adverse events of patient safety.

Patient safety being the cornerstone of high-quality healthcare, depends upon procedures linked to the detection, prevention, reduction, documentation, and evaluation of errors that otherwise can lead to adverse events, both preventable and non-preventable. In this study, Frost & Sullivan has categorized next-gen patient safety solutions into three types: IT-based, medical device-based, and process-based. We have studied the three major care settings of hospitals, primary care, and long-term care. As the US and Western European healthcare industries are witnessing the shift from fee-for-service to outcome-driven value-based care, focus is now on providing quality care and patient satisfaction to ensure patient safety. Next-gen patient safety solutions introduce artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, machine learning, deep learning, natural language understanding, and other emerging technologies to address adverse events in a more effective way, leading to impactful decision-making by clinicians, reduced morbidity and mortality rates, decreased cost burden, and high-tech solutions that take patient safety to new heights. Among the top goals of companies’ next-gen solutions are the detection of adverse events at an early stage, even before occurrence, to prevent them and reduce or eliminate clinician/nurse burnout, which is enabled by increased automation, accuracy, ease of operation, speed, and cost-effectiveness (in most cases).