Ai Helps to Diagnose Hospital-Acquired Infections

DooKey

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
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C-diff infectons are a common hospital-acquired malady that 453,000 people contract every year after being admitted to the hospital. Out of the large number of people that contract the infection about 29,000 die. The key to defeating it is early detection and treatment. In order to better the chance of detection and treatment the pairing of a computer scientist and an infectious-disease specialist resulted in the development of an AI program that can track patients and predict an infection five days soon than the doctors could. Overall, I have to hand it to them and once again chalk this up as another great use of AI.

Using that information, the duo created a model to predict the likelihood that a patient would contract a C-diff infection at each hospital. According to their research, these models predicted the infection an average of five days sooner than doctors could.

If their system is widely implemented, those five days could be the difference between life or death for hospital patients in the United States and across the globe.
 
c-diff affects immuno-compromised patients. The irony is certain antibiotics make make the situation worse as it can kill the good bacteria that prevents this from happening.

It wouldn't be hard to build a statistical model based on the historical rate, current rate & growth of c-diff in a hospital and if that patient is treated by the same nurse who treated a c-diff patient.

It's like when google used AI to figure out the best way to run their chillers (which heat/cool the buildings) for the least energy. While it was a clever application of AI, it could have been done by a statistical model and interpolation given a years worth of performance & weather data. It's actually quite simple. Energy Out (J/s) divided by Energy In (J/s). You want this number as close to one as possible but still maintain a comfortable environment. (IE: Data with 90F incoming air is not a comfortable building) It becomes a balancing act. Leave the air in the heat exchange process longer, the better the efficiency of heat transfer, but greater the temperature gradients. Push the air faster to maintain a more comfortable environment and then get less the thermal efficiency. (Exchanger, Pump motor & Air Handler motor, static back pressure efficiency plays into this as well)
 
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i am waiting for AI to replace doctors in general. When ever i am in a hospital or such, i spend more time with the lab techs or nurses who are running the tests
 
Name one thing that doesn't suck about going to a hospital in the US. Yeah, maybe you'll be cured of one disease, but maybe you'll contract another... and then 95% of the time you'll be saddled with crippling debt.
 
theplaidfad said:
Name one thing that doesn't suck about going to a hospital in the US. Yeah, maybe you'll be cured of one disease, but maybe you'll contract another... and then 95% of the time you'll be saddled with crippling debt.
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http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/World

I don't care how you google it, the top batch of hospitals show up mostly in the USA. We have the highest number of cardiac specialty units per capita. We have the highest number of oncology units per capita. We have the greatest number of MRI machines per capita. We have among the highest success rates in transplant operations in the world.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/World

I don't care how you google it, the top batch of hospitals show up mostly in the USA. We have the highest number of cardiac specialty units per capita. We have the highest number of oncology units per capita. We have the greatest number of MRI machines per capita. We have among the highest success rates in transplant operations in the world.
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Yep, for a steep price. Suppose I get cancer. One of these hospitals saves my life. Does that life seem like it's worth living once the bills start rolling in? I know a guy who had a freak heart attack at a young age. The inability to pay the bills for the services rendered have his life still in shambles a decade and a half later.
 
theplaidfad said:
Yep, for a steep price. Suppose I get cancer. One of these hospitals saves my life. Does that life seem like it's worth living once the bills start rolling in? I know a guy who had a freak heart attack at a young age. The inability to pay the bills for the services rendered have his life still in shambles a decade and a half later.
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Well not to sound cruel, but that's why you put insurance first after home and food. Don't buy a cell. Don't buy cable TV. Don't buy a car without insurance. Roughly 80% of that money you pay for insurance comes back to you in the form of pay outs.

If he was poor, he could have filed for medicaid ahead of time and he would have had it taken care of.

You can also typically get hospitals to talk down your debt < 50%. There are pro-bono lawyers that do this as a public service.

That said, just about all bad debts get erased off your credit history after 7 years. So I have no idea why he's still hurting after 15 years. What likely happened is the hospital sold off the debt to a creditor for pennies on the dollar (.05/$1.00 is better than nothing) And the creditor hounded him. Well he doesn't have to pay the creditor and can contest charges 15 years later. The creditor will then sell it to another creditor as a bad debt. If he makes no payments for 7 years, it's a dead debt. No one can collect on it unless he starts paying again. Then that 7 year time frame starts over.

Lots of people don't pay back hospitals. Or do you think every illegal alien or drug addict that steps into an emergency room for a hangover/head cold pays his bill? Just sit in an emergency room sometime and look at the clientele. I've spent enough time in hospitals to know. Inner city ones are even worse. The emergency room is one of the most expensive places you can go.

I'm not encouraging him to break the law, but he should consult a lawyer as to his options. A judge might vacate the balance if it's affecting his ability to live.

That's one of the reasons we pay so much for insurance. It's called COST-SHIFTING.
 
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I respect my good friends privacy too much to say any more than what I already did, but I can promise you that if you think any of the blame should be on him rather than put fucked up medical system in this country, I can only hope you can understand where I might be coming from when I say you're wrong.

Now on the other hand, if you're coming from a point of view that there is nothing wrong with our system, then I can only say you're either a loon, or a person benefiting from it directly
 
Something that's not so common is this... My wife's Boss "used to LOVE" taking care of our dog whenever we went out of town. Until - she caught c-diff from our dog.
 
theplaidfad said:
I respect my good friends privacy too much to say any more than what I already did, but I can promise you that if you think any of the blame should be on him rather than put fucked up medical system in this country, I can only hope you can understand where I might be coming from when I say you're wrong.

Now on the other hand, if you're coming from a point of view that there is nothing wrong with our system, then I can only say you're either a loon, or a person benefiting from it directly
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On top of what you said, ObamaCare is really balling us in the nades! My folks have Obamacare and are easily depleted of $1400 monthly with $33k Co-Pay. In this country, you either are rich enough to pay or give up and employ socialized medicine. The sad thing is, people are not being taken care, only to be bankrupt!
 
In this country, you either are rich enough to pay or give up and employ socialized medicine. The sad thing is, people are not being taken care, only to be bankrupt!
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Hey, this is America. Healthcare isn't to make people healthy. It's to make money. The more people who get sick, the more money there is to be made. There is no incentive to keep people healthy; healthy people don't generate fees. The affordable care act wasn't designed to help the people. It was ultimately designed to make sure that the medical providers GOT PAID. Any chance of it being beneficial to the general population disappeared when Max Baucus (Senator from Montana, retired INSURANCE INDUSTRY EXECUTIVE) made sure that single payer was dead in the water before releasing the ACA from committee. Once that was done, both the insurance companies and the medical providers were guaranteed profits. The taxpayers? Screwed again, as usual.

The business of America is business. What's good for the corporations is good for America....the people be damned.
 
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