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Computerworld - NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System is rolling out an IT system that generates suggested care plans for physicians based on data about previous patient outcomes and then sends alerts if treatments don't appear to be working.
The Patient Health Monitor project, which the health care system began two months ago at its flagship NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, currently uses artificial intelligence (AI) software to create treatment plans for patients in cardiac intensive-care units. The plans are based on the records of 7,500 cardiac patients, which are among 2.5 million patient records in a data repository.
In addition, the system takes data from equipment such as heart monitors and provides alerts to physicians via tablet PCs if patients deviate from projected outcomes, said J. David Liss, vice president of government relations and strategic initiatives at the health system.
Unlike traditional clinical support systems that use rules engines to suggest patient care, the health monitor is based on inferencing technology designed by a NewYork-Presbyterian physician. The software builds care plans by matching patient characteristics such as age, disease type and medication history with successful prior outcomes. "All of the alerts are relevant to the patient because they are based on a history of cases," Liss said.
In addition, because the repository is updated with new patient records every 24 hours, the AI system has an ever-growing pool of data to exploit to generate the care plans, Liss said.
Plans call for the health monitor technology to be expanded to other departments in the hospital and to other hospitals in the NewYork-Presbyterian system, according to Liss.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the first to use the AI-based system. Image Credit: Newscom

The project was funded by $250,000 in donations from Verizon Communications Inc. and Intel Corp. and $50,000 worth of donated equipment from Computer Motion Inc. and Dell Inc.
Eric Brown, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said he knows of only one other health care entity that has launched a similar initiative. The Mayo Clinic and IBM in August 2004 said they were starting to use a DB2 database to help physicians treat patients.
"This idea of a decision-support system is one of the outcomes we'd like to see from the introduction of electronic medical records ... moving to an era of personalized medicine," Brown said. "It is taking your particular situation and plugging it into the database -- not searching for all people who have had a heart attack, but all patients who have had a heart attack who look like you."

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