Israeli hospitals face second nationwide computer system malfunction

Another severe malfunction in the computerized medical record system in hospitals: The Health Ministry reported that following control and inspection processes, another exceptional malfunction was found in the Chameleon computerized medical record management system used by several hospitals.

Due to the malfunction, incorrect copying of clinical information for some hospitalized patients was recorded.

According to the findings, some of the errors led to the copying of incorrect blood types, wrong diagnoses, and erroneous recording of procedures that were copied from one patient to another.

The ministry stated that, so far, there was no evidence that patients were harmed by the malfunctions. The extent of the defect was still under investigation.

The first malfuction

In February, the first malfunction occurred in the Chameleon software by the Elad Systems group, installed in most hospitals.

That malfunction caused the erroneous addition of medications to the fixed medication list in some patients' medical records. The error likely affected about 1,200 people.

The Chameleon system has been installed and operated since 2008 in about 80 percent of the hospitals in the country, used by tens to hundreds of thousands daily.

The Chameleon managed the entire process of admission in the emergency room, hospitalization, and treatment in the departments and clinics of the hospitals.