Have you been the victim of a medication error in San Diego? This unfortunate turn of events occurs much more often that you may think. The most common type of medication error comes from the incorrect dispensing of medicine. This can be due to any number of factors, with potentially tragic results.
How can AI help report errors?
A new system of machine learning is being developed to help report, and thus reduce, the prevalence of medication errors. This is very good news since errors of these kind claim thousands of lives per year. In fact, they claim more lives than AIDS, breast cancer and vehicle accidents.
The new method is computational in nature. It uses a pair of distinct approaches that are based in machine learning. The idea is to search, locate and visualize the patterns that point to where errors occur. Once located, they can then be studied closer. The result is a better understanding of where to look for mistakes.
What causes a medication error?
There are many different reasons that a medical error may occur, such as the improper dosage of medication. You may receive too strong or too light of a dose. You may receive it at the wrong time, or a nurse may administer the wrong type of medication entirely. All of these come under the heading of malpractice.
Medical errors of any type can result in injury, disability or death. New studies using AI are helping to figure out why these errors occur, which should help prevent further injuries and fatalities from harming victims of medical malpractice in the future.
