The IOM released Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care, a report that describes a detailed plan to facilitate the development of data standards applicable to the collection, coding, and classification of patient safety information.

This report addresses key areas related to the establishment of a national health information infrastructure, including:

• a process for the ongoing promulgation of data standards;
• the status of current standards-setting activities in health data interchange, terminologies, and medical knowledge representation; as well as
• the need for comprehensive patient safety programs in health care organizations.

Recommendations are made for an applied research agenda on patient safety.

More information on the IOM's Quality of Care Initiative