In its 2004 report, “Patient Safety, Achieving a New Standard for Care,” the US Institute of Medicine stated that “patient safety systems [should] integrate with clinical information systems.” Recommendation one in this report was that “Improved information and data systems are needed to support efforts to make patient safety a standard of care” and that all healthcare organizations should “capture information on patient safety… and use this information to design even safer care delivery systems.” Medical incident reports typically indicate the harm (or precursor to harm), staff roles involved and potential causes related to the incident. We have hypothesized that...