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978-3-031-88346-0_1
Book chapter

Characterizing Physician Referral Networks with Ricci Curvature

BP2-STS

  • 2025
Published in:
  • Communications in Computer and Information Science. - : Springer Nature Switzerland. - 2025, p. 1-16
Physician Referral Networks
Ricci Curvature
Networks in Healthcare
Networks
Topological Data Analysis
English Identifying (a) systemic barriers to quality healthcare access and (b) key indicators of care efficacy in the United States remains a significant challenge. To improve our understanding of regional disparities in care delivery, we introduce a novel application of curvature, a geometrical-topological property of networks, to Physician Referral Networks. Our initial findings reveal that Forman-Ricci and Ollivier-Ricci curvature measures, which are known for their expressive power in characterizing network structure, offer promising indicators for detecting variations in healthcare efficacy while capturing a range of significant regional demographic features. We also present apparent, an open-source tool that leverages Ricci curvature and other network features to examine correlations between regional Physician Referral Networks structure, local census data, healthcare effectiveness, and patient outcomes.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département d'Informatique
Language
  • English
Classification
Computer science and technology
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/332242
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