University Hospitals Birmingham suggests its IT system, which has harnessed IT to bear down on errors, could prevent deaths

University Hospitals Birmingham has recommended its IT system to prevent up to 16,000 deaths a year in England's hospitals, the BBC has reported.

The trust says IT surveillance on its wards is backed up by a policy of holding staff to account for errors.

A report by the trust shows how they have harnessed IT to bear down on errors, with the initial focus on preventing missed medications.

Staff at the trust are issued with computer-generated reminders, and the system also issues warnings to prevent prescriptions which could harm the patient.

The trust says it saw a 17 per cent fall in deaths among emergency patients over 12 months, which would equate to 16,000 deaths prevented across England.

Missed medications are just one of many clinical activities that are monitored on University Hospitals Birmingham's computer database, and presented to staff on the wards on a dashboard display.

It also includes falls, checks for blood-clots and infection control.

The system also generates alarms when staff key-in clinical information that could give cause for concern, such as changes to a patient's temperature, heart rate, or blood pressure. This triggers an alert in the critical care Unit, prompting an outreach team to be dispatched to wherever they are needed in the hospital.

Where mistakes arise, the real-time feedback to senior executives enables them to call staff to account, with regular reviews to assess and explain performance.

The trust's medical director Dr Dave Rosser said: "It has become over the decades culturally acceptable for drugs not to be given to patients, and what we've been trying to do here is turn round that culture and say every single dose is important."

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