Live Blog: EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA - Highlighting Kaiser Permanente's CIRAS System for Risk Management and Incident Analysis

Dang Nguyen, Senior Manager of EH&S at Kaiser Permanente, gave a presentation today at EHSSENTIALS 2017 UCLA on the hospital group's implementation of technology into their risk management and incident analysis procedures. Nguyen highlighted Kaiser Permanente's native CIRAS system (Comprehensive Incident Reporting and Analysis System), which ties together risk management, cause-effect mapping, and internal reporting into a single comprehensive system. He pointed out that while most organisations use Excel for their process and cause-effect mapping, CIRAS has a more user-friendly user graphic user interface which ties directly to an internal database of risks and actions/conditions that can lead to incidents, including environmental factors, equipment factors, procedure factors, and human factors. Nguyen stated that moving forward, the next steps to achieving user-friendliness in their system is replacing safety industry jargon with "plainspeak" and generally improving software training for employees.