C. Cornalba, R. Bellazzi, S. Quaglini, R.G. Bellazzi¹, M. Stefanelli

Department of Computer Science and Systems, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
¹Unit of Nephrology and Dialysis, S.O. Vigevano, A.O. Pavia, Vigevano, Italy

Adverse events in health care organizations (HCOs) are more than a serious concern. Over the last few years the awareness of this problem has raised and different organizational solutions have been tried. In general, an adverse event is defined as an unwanted damage and uneasiness due to health service's supply which provoke morbidity, mortality or a longer hospital stay; the damage and the uneasiness should not be related to the natural worsening of patient disease. The adverse events generally hit patients and are due to causes which are related to the health process. Risk management involves all activities and actions performed to improve health care performances and to guarantee security of patients; the security is also based on learning from events. This paper is aimed at proposing risk management as the basic methodological approach to deal with adverse events by the HCOs. In our case, we will concentrate on the problem of managing clinical risks: they'- re a sub-category of risk management related to the particular service supplied (the health care delivery). Our focus is patient safety, i.e. the basic