AI tool will help identify, treat deadly lung condition
Researchers and scientists with the Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York, are developing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can identify patients with a deadly lung condition.
The medical center will use a $1.2 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop the AI tool, which will be designed to screen and flag people at risk of developing a deadly form of lung failure—acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
The condition occurs when the lungs fill with fluid and deprive organs of oxygen. It can be difficult to treat and is missed in patients about 40 percent of the time, according to the medical center. The tool will be created using the center’s existing AI platform. Years of patient data will be used to determine data points for the condition to help create a profile.
"Since diagnosis depends on the patient meeting a number of criteria, it is easy for one of the criteria to be attributed to another acute condition, rather than to ARDS,” Michelle Ng Gong, MD, Montefiore Health System chief of research and clinical care, said in a statement. “By using new technology we hope to help clinicians identify ARDS as early as possible, when treatment may be most effective.”
The AI tool will run in the background of the medical center’s electronic medical record (EMR) system and flag patients who match the profile for the condition. If a patient is flagged for being at risk of developing the syndrome, the tool provides doctors with best practices on how to treat them.
“We have seen the power of AI and predictive analytics to accurately pinpoint patients at risk for other critical conditions and believe AI can be effective in helping clinicians identify patients with ARDS too,” Parsa Mirhaji, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Health Data Innovations and Montefiore Health System director of clinical research, said in a statement. “The ultimate goal is for AI to become a standard tool for clinicians, helping them provide the best care for our patients.”
Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls.