As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the U.S., the Veterans Affairs Department is piloting a new artificial intelligence tool to quickly predict a patient’s prognosis and recommend next steps.
During tense medical crises, as hospital beds fill up and minutes and seconds mean the difference between life and death, doctors, nurses and other care providers need to assess new patients quickly to determine the right course of action with the resources available.
“The problem is, given a positive detection of COVID viral test—if someone has a positive test—what is the prognosis? Will the patient need hospitalization? Are they at risk of death, etc.? What will be their needs?” Gil Alterovitz, director of AI at the VA’s National Artificial Intelligence Institute, said Thursday at the Genius Machines 2020 Virtual Summit hosted by Nextgov and Defense One. “The approach was to develop an applied AI model for that using both clinical and nonclinical information.”
VA officials started working on the tool shortly after the outbreak in early spring. Working with clinicians at the Washington DC VA Medical Center, the team pulled data from more than 11,000 patients from across the VA to analyze how more than 30 features—such as heart rate, blood pressure, preexisting health issues, etc.—affected recovery and mortality rates.
A VA official offered an example of how it works: A patient with a preexisting kidney disorder comes to a VA clinic and is diagnosed with COVID-19. A standard prognosis might give that person a high mortality rating due to the underlying conditions. However, the algorithm gave that person a low mortality risk score, discovering other factors that showed the patient was likely to recove ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
