Fuzzy cognitive maps for adverse drug event risk management

This work aims at developing a procedure for analysing the drug administration process in order to understand and highlight the criticalities and risks of the process as well as the cognitive mechanisms governing human decisions during the process. Drug therapy management and drug administration are recognised as expanding, complex, and crucial aspects of the health care system, which also help to limit unnecessary costs from complications or hospitalizations. Improved clinical outcomes can result from a more controlled drug administration process, reducing the probability of errors made by the involved operators. The whole drug administration process, starting from the patients' inlet to their entering the health unit up to the medication itself can hide potential causes of errors or lack of compliance procedures. The more complex the system there is to manage, the higher the liability of wrong operations. It is thus fundamental to deeply understand the cognitive mechanisms influencing the occurrence of errors and, to this end, a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) approach will be described in this study. FCMs helped the authors to highlight the cognitive mechanisms that influence decision-making processes in drug management and evidenced the critical factors affecting the drug therapy management process as a whole, thus pointing out corrective actions for the patient's better and continuous health-related quality of life.