A new study titled "Experimental evidence for structured information–sharing networks reducing medical errors" is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Dr. Jingwen Zhang and colleagues shared results from a multi-year study involving nearly 3,000 clinicians across the United States. Using a research mobile application, the researchers conducted an online experiment where clinicians were randomly assigned to either an individual reflection control condition or a peer-network condition where they shared information on diagnostic assessment and treatment recommendation. Results showed that structured information–sharing networks among clinicians significantly reduced diagnostic errors, and improved treatment recommendations.

Below is the abstract of the article:

"Errors in clinical decision-making are disturbingly common. Here, we show that structured information–sharing networks among clinicians significantly reduce diagnostic errors, and improve treatment recommendations, as compared to groups of individual clinicians engaged in independent reflection. Our findings show that these improvements are not a result of simple regression to the group mean. Instead, we find that within structured information–sharing networks, the worst clinicians improved significantly while the best clinicians did not decrease in quality. These findings offer implications for the use of social network technologies to reduce diagnostic errors and improve treatment recommendations among clinicians."