December 30, 2025
Tokyo – Artificial intelligence will be used to analyze data related to unexpected deaths in medical institutions and identify recurring problems, the Japan Agency for Medical Safety announced.
The organization receives incident reports from medical institutions when a patient suddenly dies in a clinical setting. By analyzing this large amount of data using AI, the aim is to help experts formulate measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
Under the current system, when a medical accident occurs, medical institutions are required to report it to the Medical Accident Investigation and Support Center operated by the organization concerned. This is followed by a summary of the health care provider's investigation into the incident, including possible causes.
Until now, the organization has asked experts to select the most frequently occurring items from its reports and published the key points of the preventive measures it has considered.
However, between 2015, when the current system was launched, and December 2024, only about 10% of all cases were analyzed by experts. Therefore, the organization plans to use AI to analyze the contents of all medical accident reports and extract patterns such as commonalities.
By utilizing these results, experts are expected to be able to consider important issues comprehensively and efficiently.
We also accept inquiries from medical institutions that cannot determine whether a medical accident has occurred. Even if an organization makes a recommendation that it appears to be eligible for designation, there are cases in which no further reports are made.
The organization plans to start following up on the facilities it advised, including checking on the progress of discussions within the hospital.
