“Never events,” like leaving a sponge in a patient’s body, or wrong site-wrong procedure-wrong patient, are never supposed to happen, but according to a first of its kind study of malpractice claims that Johns Hopkins researchers carried out, they occur quite often—roughly 4,000 times a year in American hospitals.  In more than 6% of those cases, the patient dies.  Here, then, is an arena where artificial intelligence and medical automation could hold the cutting edge in OR practice.  MORE