Characterizing Physician Referral Networks with Ricci Curvature
<|reference_start|>Characterizing Physician Referral Networks with Ricci Curvature: 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.<|reference_end|>
@article{wayland2024characterizing,
    title={Characterizing Physician Referral Networks with Ricci Curvature},
    author={Jeremy Wayland, Russel J. Funk, Bastian Rieck},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.16022},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2408.16022},
    primaryClass={cs.SI cs.LG}
}