Artificial Intelligence Developed In Utah To Help Predict COVID-19 Risks
Mar 19, 2021, 4:47 PM | Updated: Jan 2, 2023, 11:31 pm
MURRAY, Utah — Doctors and data analysts at Intermountain Healthcare have developed innovative artificial intelligence methods to better treat patients with COVID-19, using data analytics tools and algorithms to help predict risks and find the best treatments.
As a result, they’ve been able to keep dozens of patients from being hospitalized.
“Identifying which patients are at higher risk of having poor outcomes is a very important part of healthcare delivery,” said Dr. Brandon Webb, an infectious diseases physician at Intermountain Healthcare and chair of the COVID therapeutics committee.
That’s how they personalize patient care, he said. The principle is not new, but Webb said doctors recognized its importance in the battle with COVID with limited resources.
“And where we have a disease that in most people causes a fairly mild disease, and yet in a fraction of patients, causes a terrible disease,” he said.
When a patient arrives at the hospital and tests positive for COVID-19, caregivers use data analytics to determine who is at risk for being admitted to the ICU, who is at risk to develop COVID hyper inflammatory syndrome, and who may benefit from monoclonal antibody treatment therapy.
“We recognized right from the first days of the pandemic that collecting information about COVID was going to be really important, and we’ve been doing just that,” Webb said.
Physicians help data analysts design the analytic tools and blend that information with traditional medicine to make the best decisions for patients.
The analytics enabled care managers to proactively contact 1,500 at-risk patients to help them take precautions.
Webb said the tools helped them get antibody treatment to the patients who needed it most, preventing the hospitalization of more than 150 people who might have gotten much sicker, or even died.
“That’s a game changer,” the infectious diseases physician said.
The information also helped Utah hospitals avoid being overwhelmed.
“150 patients less in the hospital is 150 beds that can be used to care for other patients who need it,” he said.
The findings were published by Dr. Webb and other researchers in the medical journal, Lancet Rheumatology, in Dec. 2020 so the innovations could be shared with other professionals.