The tech also predicts the length of a patient’s hospital stay and their likelihood of readmission.
Physicians can use this information to take preventive measures for high-risk patients like consulting with an internist, ordering additional testing or postponing a surgery altogether, said Dr. Thomas Mroz, a spine and orthopedic surgeon at Cleveland Clinic, in a phone interview.
The organizations say their objective is to put processes in place that can reduce complications and adverse events related to surgery. The platform combines Clinic data on patient outcomes with technology from the Health Data Analytics Institute.
“We're targeting a number of use cases in those settings, specifically looking at optimizing patients before they get admitted to the hospital for a procedure and trying to not only optimize their admission process, but also understand all their risk factors,” said Nassib Chamoun, founder of the Health Data Analytics Institute.
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The organizations have had a relationship for multiple years, Chamoun said, working together on several papers focused on using predictive models to stratify high-risk patients.
With this project, they have put the technology in the hands of the clinicians working in the health system’s spine center.
Having this tool at their disposal can aid physicians in their clinical decision-making, Mroz said. A number of different procedures are performed in the spine, ranging from discectomies to spinal fusions. Physicians must consider many discrete data points in their decision-making process, Mroz said, but it’s impossible to know all these data at once without a tool like this.
Chamoun said the tech helps a patient’s clinical team share with them all their options and potential risks when they go in for a consultation for a procedure.
“It also provides every member of the care team, once they decide to proceed with surgery, with a risk profile for that patient that's quantitative and that's consistent across their journey,” he said.
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Mroz said this technology is helping transform the way clinicians diagnose and could help the Clinic’s spine center become the most advanced in the U.S. The move comes as AI continues to take on a larger presence in the healthcare system. Earlier this year, the Clinic hired its first chief AI officer, and President and CEO Dr. Tom Mihaljevic said the system had begun exploring AI in patient-caregiver interactions during his State of the Clinic address in January.
Chamoun said there is a massive data burden on today’s clinicians.
“We’re reducing their time in the electronic health record and shifting it to focusing on personalizing care for patients,” he said. “That’s a more joyful way to practice for them, less burdensome, and ultimately better for the patient and their outcomes.”
This story first appeared in Crain's Cleveland Business.
