About the Authors

Thomas E. Cowling

t.cowling@imperial.ac.uk

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Elizabeth V. Cecil

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Michael A. Soljak

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

John Tayu Lee

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Christopher Millett

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Azeem Majeed

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Robert M. Wachter

Affiliation Division of Hospital Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Matthew J. Harris

Affiliation Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

EC, MS and CM were funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). MS has provided consultancy services for NHS London, Association of Public Health Observatories and the Information Standards Board. RW is Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine and serves on the Board of Directors for Salem Hospital; has received payment for lectures on patient safety and healthcare quality; has received funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to edit two patient safety websites, from publishers for two healthcare textbooks, and from John Wiley & Sons for writing a blog; has received payment from QuantiaMD and IPC-The Hospitalist Company for educational presentations; and is on the scientific advisory board of, and has stock options in, PatientSafe Solutions, CRISI, and EarlySense. The authors can confirm that these do not alter their adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: TC EC MS JTL CM AM MH. Performed the experiments: TC. Analyzed the data: TC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: TC EC MS JTL. Wrote the paper: TC. Contributed to the interpretation of data: TC EC MS JTL CM AM RW MH. Revised the manuscript for important intellectual content: TC EC MS JTL CM AM RW MH. Approved the final version to be published: TC EC MS JTL CM AM RW MH.