Strengthening weak signals. Towards improved patient safety with better use of routine data.

Healthcare associated harm is an unfortunate and often preventable by-product of healthcare. All too often these harms only come to light following critical health service safety failures, the likes of which attract significant government and media attention. This thesis examines how we can better monitor health system safety using data that is already being collected. The outcome of this work is a model for the sharing and integration of patient safety and clinical risk data from a variety of sources. Taken together, these data can be applied to detect health services at risk of safety failures before large-scale harms occur.