Current design and assessment methods cannot ensure that software is error free and consequently fault tolerant techniques play an important role in safety critical systems to ensure reliable software behaviour. Unfortunately general guidelines for the implementation of software diagnostics are lacking. The aim of this work is to build on the previous research in software error detection and th...

When approaching the symptom of acute onset chest pain in a previously healthy 26-year-old male, anchoring heuristic presents a challenge to healthcare workers. This diagnostic error is the healthcare professional's tendency to rely on a previous diagnosis, and, in situations where a set of symptoms might mask a rare and deadly condition, this error can prove fatal for the patient. One such con...

Sensitivity and specificity are often used to assess the performance of a diagnostic test with binary outcomes. Wald-type test statistics have been proposed for testing sensitivity and specificity individually. In the presence of a gold standard, simultaneous comparison between two diagnostic tests for noninferiority of sensitivity and specificity based on an asymptotic approach has been studie...

introduction: medication errors are among the most serious health errors threatening patient safety in all countries, with major impacts on public health. midwives as members of healthcare systems are prone to such errors. therefore, in this study, we aimed to determine medication errors and the contributing factors among midwives working in maternity units of mashhad university of medical scie...

In order to evaluate the accuracy of diagnostic tests based on 2 x 2 tables, a number of indices were used, some of which are occasionally used inappropriately. This paper demonstrates the characteristics and problems with those indices, and introduces several methods to compare the accuracy of two diagnostic tests. The author summarizes existing indices based on 2 x 2 tables, agreement rate, k...

The specificity and sensitivity of a quantitative diagnostic test depends on the chosen cutoff point. The common practice of selecting a cutoff point that maximizes the specificity plus the sensitivity, as judged from the observed test results, is studied here by simulation. Test performance is on average assessed too optimistically by this procedure--a phenomenon of importance when sample size...

Introduction: The image quality as well as film speed is influenced by the film processing conditions. Different combinations of films and processing methods affect the diagnostic accu-racy. Temperature and developer exhaustion result in different image quality. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of film type and processing conditions on caries detec-tion.  Material a...

OBJECTIVE Diagnostic errors lead to preventable hospital morbidity and mortality. ICU patients may be at particularly high risk for misdiagnosis. Little is known about misdiagnosis in pediatrics, including PICU and neonatal ICU. We sought to assess diagnostic errors in PICU and neonatal ICU settings by systematic review. DATA SOURCES We searched PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane. STUDY S...