Did a Deep Dive After Interviewing a Startup, Scalpel, working to decrease the over 440 thousand deaths or the third leading cause of death due to medical errors (read preventable) in the US alone. Here are all of the links I found along with the episode for those interested.
Here is a great case study and primer on the types of problems we are talking about.
Quick version at under 5 min (youtube video)
Short Link
Long Version About 13 min (youtube video)
“As a result of his personal experience, Martin Bromiley founded the Clinical Human Factors Group in 2007. This group brings together experts, clinicians and enthusiasts who have an interest in placing the understanding of human factors at the heart of improving patient safety. In Just A Routine Operation Martin talks about his experience of losing his wife during an apparently routine procedure and his hopes for making a change to practice in healthcare.”
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Key Part “”If you ask the public about patient safety most people don’t really know about it,” she said. “If you ask them the top causes of death, most people wouldn’t say ‘preventable harm.’ “”
2) 13 min Podcast episode walking through this topic (Really great listen)
“Medical error is not included on death certificates or in rankings of cause of death. Martin Makary and Michael Daniel assess its contribution to mortality and call for better reporting
3) “The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about” Article
“-A recent Johns Hopkins study claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000.
-Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.”
4) Comprehensive overview through this wiki page
Causes as seen from the page
A) Healthcare complexity
Complicated technologies, powerful drugs, intensive care, and prolonged hospital stay can contribute to medical errors
B) System and process design
n 2000, The Institute of Medicine released “To Err is Human,” which asserted that the problem in medical errors is not bad people in health care—it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer.[9]
Poor communication and unclear lines of authority of physicians, nurses, and other care providers are also contributing factors.[27] Disconnected reporting systems within a hospital can result in fragmented systems in which numerous hand-offs of patients results in lack of coordination and errors.[28]
Other factors include the impression that action is being taken by other groups within the institution, reliance on automated systems to prevent error.,[29] and inadequate systems to share information about errors, which hampers analysis of contributory causes and improvement strategies.[30] Cost-cutting measures by hospitals in response to reimbursement cutbacks can compromise patient safety.[31] In emergencies, patient care may be rendered in areas poorly suited for safe monitoring. The American Institute of Architects has identified concerns for the safe design and construction of health care facilities.[32] Infrastructure failure is also a concern. According to the WHO, 50% of medical equipment in developing countries is only partly usable due to lack of skilled operators or parts. As a result, diagnostic procedures or treatments cannot be performed, leading to substandard treatment.
The Joint Commission‘s Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2007 found that inadequate communication between healthcare providers, or between providers and the patient and family members, was the root cause of over half the serious adverse events in accredited hospitals.[33] Other leading causes included inadequate assessment of the patient’s condition, and poor leadership or training.
C) Competency, education, and training
Variations in healthcare provider training & experience[27][34] and failure to acknowledge the prevalence and seriousness of medical errors also increase the risk.[35][36]The so-called July effect occurs when new residents arrive at teaching hospitals, causing an increase in medication errors according to a study of data from 1979-2006.[37][38]
D) Human factors and ergonomics
Cognitive errors commonly encountered in medicine were initially identified by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s. Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think, says these are “cognitive pitfalls”, biases which cloud our logic. For example, a practitioner may overvalue the first data encountered, skewing his thinking (or recent or dramatic cases which come quickly to mind and may color judgement). Another pitfall is where stereotypes may prejudice thinking.[39]
Sleep deprivation has also been cited as a contributing factor in medical errors.[12] One study found that being awake for over 24 hours caused medical interns to double or triple the number of preventable medical errors, including those that resulted in injury or death.[40] The risk of car crash after these shifts increased by 168%, and the risk of near miss by 460%.[41] Interns admitted falling asleep during lectures, during rounds, and even during surgeries.[41] Night shifts are associated with worse surgeon performance during laparoscopic surgeries.[12]
Practitioner risk factors include fatigue,[42][43][44] depression, and burnout.[45] Factors related to the clinical setting include diverse patients, unfamiliar settings, time pressures, and increased patient-to-nurse staffing ratio increases.[46]Drug names that look alike or sound alike are also a problem.[47]
5) This is a list of 10 errors that resulted in changes in the medical system. It has one of those annoying slider things instead of it all just being on one page, but I still enjoyed it. Link
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440,000 Deaths Each Year Due to Preventable Medical Errors and How One Startup, Scalpel, and It’s Founder, Dr. Yesh, is Fighting to Reduce That Number
Surgery, Patient Safety, AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Medical errors, and Human Factors
About Yesh CEO and Founder:
“I am a generalist who builds technologies that improve healthcare. Trained as a dentist, I have over five years of interdisciplinary experience in healthcare and technology (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Computer Vision). I previously built a startup (Open Simulation) to provide low-cost surgical simulation using Augmented Reality. In my PhD, I designed and evaluated one of the first immersive virtual reality training tools for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. I can understand healthcare challenges from a clinical point of view and build tools that address those needs. Currently, I am focused on making surgery safer through Scalpel Ltd.”
About Scalpel
“To help hospitals reduce preventable errors and cut down costs in litigation, Scalpel Ltd. is building an end to end patient safety platform. This AI-powered platform checks and verifies the implementation of safety steps during surgery using a combination of computer vision and machine learning technologies. Unlike standard checklists, Scalpel’s solution doesn’t require any human interaction, sitting in the background in any operating room it automatically monitors, it provides real-time feedback to detect and prevent errors.”
Key factors that this startup is working on or with: Surgery, Patient Safety, AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Medical errors, and Human Factor.
Key Sections if you want to skip to the sections on this thread
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[ 03:58 ] How Scalpel makes surgeries safer, and how it works.
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[ 06:20 ] How problems creep in (i.e. Martin Bromley).
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[ 08:40 ] How big of an impact, and how medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA.
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[ 11:10 ] Why we have not thought of this solution before, and what separates humans vs machines.
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[ 14:50 ] How he has gotten people involved who help determine to what extent this technology will be appreciated.
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[ 17:35 ] Where they are now, and what features they would work on next.
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[ 19:11 ] What tools he has used to developed this technology.
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[ 23:52 ] What hurtles he has overcome.
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I recently learned about this problem, so I wanted to learn more. Have you recently found something that your surprised more people do not know? I’m always up for learning new things.