Curvature Informatics about Medical Errors: Geometric View of Incidence Restricted Poisson

Abstract

Medical errors, more often than never, occur worldwide in spite of well-planned academic coaching, intensive internship training, much regulated medical practices, or vigilance of patients. The incidences are too frightening. Sorting through their numbers to compare preventable versus systemic medical errors is tedious. To ease the process, based on curvature concept, an approach and curvature indices are developed and illustrated using data in Landrigan et al. (2010) about the medical errors, which occurred in nine procedures while treating hospital-acquired infections. The errors caused the patients: (E) to undergo more treatments, (F) to prolong hospitalization, (G) to have permanent heath damages, (H) to suffer to sustain life, or (I) to die. A research direction for further exploration is suggested in the end.