Gerald Sandler and James AuBuchon to the Advisory Committee established that technology to correct this problem is now available. The Advisory Committee encourages the rapid implementation of this technology. There is, however, one major issue that is unresolved. That issue is where to draw the line between what information should be held in confidence, and what information should be publicly accessible, at least at an organizational level. Neither the Advisory Committee nor the public at large appear to have achieved consensus on this issue.
Consumers expect full disclosure.
This is essentially the status quo in transfusion medicine. As the Advisory Committee heard, the reporting mandated at 21 CFR 600.14 includes errors and accidents related to blood considered suitable for distribution, even if the blood has not been transfused into a recipient. Public disclosure of these events, and public disclosure of situations that are corrected before they cause harm, is a policy over which reasonable men and women currently disagree. In aviation, disclosure of comparable events is confidential. However, in that industry, on-line flight recording devices make voluntary reporting of aviation errors more a matter of determining why, rather than whether, an error had occurred.