Description: Realizing the impact of medical errors on the U.S. health care system, the Health Section commissioned a research project to measure the annual frequency of medical errors and their total measurable direct and indirect cost to the economy.

Description: Panel discussion, by a physician and an actuary, about the historical forces behind various trends in organ transplant experience data.

Description: Review of a research project, co-sponsored by the SOA, which examined 83 organizations and over 150 programs that measure the quality and efficiency of hospitals and physicians.

Description: Description of the vast variety of predictive analytics topics covered by the Forecasting & Futurism section and introduction to the July 2015 issue of the newsletter.

Description: Analysis of the impact of disease progression and treatment on life expectancy provides perspective on the long term costs to the health care system of chronic medical conditions.

Description: Neural networks have fallen only to rise again twice. The latest incarnation borrows much from the past but adds elements to support deep learning. This article demonstrates the state of the art in deep neural network programming.

Description: A study of disability experience examines cost burden and degree of disability, and how these measures vary across different subpopulations. This article summarizes a presentation given at the Society of Actuaries’ Living to 100: Survival to Advanced Ages International Symposium held on Jan. 7–9, 2008 in Orlando, Florida. An abstract of the author's paper was presented in the September 2008 issue of Long-Term Care News.

Description: An economic analysis of bariatric surgery and health care costs supports the case for health plans to cover these procedures.

Description: The influenza pandemic of 1918-20 is recognized as having generally taken place in three waves, starting in the northern spring and summer of 1918. This pattern of three waves, however, was not universal: in some locations influenza seems to have persisted into or returned in 1920. The recorded statistics of influenza morbidity and mortality are likely to be a significant understatement. Limitations of these data can include nonregistration, missing records, misdiagnosis, and nonmedical certification, and may also vary greatly between locations. Further research has seen the consistent upward revision of the estimated global mortality of the pandemic, which a 1920s calculation put in the vicinity of 21.5 million. A 1991 paper revised the mortality as being in the range 24.7-39.3 million. This paper suggests that it was of the order of 50 million. However, it must be acknowledged that even this vast figure may be substantially lower than the real toll, perhaps as much as 100 percent understated.