Introduction
Reducing medical errors is an important mission in any hospital as well as the health care system. The United States Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report presented an alarming picture when it was estimated that as many as 98,000 deaths occur each year in United States hospitals as a result of medical mistakes. This figure was unacceptable and medical leaders tried to formulate mechanisms in order to reduce the number of deaths. A survey conducted by the Kaiser Foundation further indicated that as many as 95% of physicians, 89% of the nurses and 82% of medical administrators had witnessed a serious medical error. Medical errors cost approximately $ 17 to $ 29 billion annually in the United States of America. Most of these errors are human errors that occur in diagnosis, prescription of medications, surgical procedures, testing etc and hence it is expected that a higher level of automation will produce positive results. It is important to maintain a health system that is free from individual blame and litigation, which genuinely cares for the patients (McGraw Hill Companies, 2004) and (Reynertson, 2004).
Because of the very large number of diseases and ailments that can afflict humans, correct diagnosis can become difficult and without correct diagnosis, the treatment of a patient can be untimely and flawed. Occam’s razor which has also been called Ockham's razor is a principle of logical reductionism which is attributed to the 14th century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. This principle relates to the methodical reduction of observations which have been translated into logical variables to come to a logically sound conclusion. Methodical reduction is also known as parsimony which refers to the trait of being able to offer the least complicated explanation for an observation. Such an explanation is used to judge a.......
