Health care system turns to IT for patient care plans - Computerworld

Health care system turns to IT for patient care plans - ComputerworldAUGUST 08, 2005 (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."