Triangulating Safety: Applying Social Media Analysis Methods to Revolutionize Patient Safety

Too many people suffer from preventable medical errors. Medical error reporting systems have already been deployed in many countries to prevent similar errors from happening again. Through such systems, millions of errors have been reported and analyzed to yield information on safety incidents. Nevertheless, there is still huge room for improvement, especially in analyzing the free text description parts of those reports. Free text entries offer richer and more detailed information on incidents, but are too often ignored or wasted due to a lack of analytical resources. Recent developments in social media analysis can be utilized to effectively address this problem. Thanks to huge advancements in computing power and algorithm design, social media companies are effectively analyzing millions of free text postings every day to extract relevant information. Their automated analysis methods can be applied to analyze medical error reports. This includes collating detailed information on incident causation and even cultural issues like power gradients among health care organizations - all information that can dramatically improve safety. Many errors are reported each day, and many are waiting to be thoroughly analyzed. Leaving them unused is neither necessary nor justifiable. Currently available computing power and analytical methods can be utilized to activate their contribution to reducing medical errors.