Hospital builds AI to prevent heatstroke deaths

As technology continues to advance and artificial intelligence (AI) proliferates, one hospital in Boston has deployed these advances to better the outcome of its patients under extreme heat and prevent heatstroke deaths.

Indeed, Mass General Brigham is working on a new AI-based alert system that can comb through electronic health records and warn vulnerable people about the dangers of heat waves, according to a report by Scientific American published on July 2.

Specifically, this includes patients coming into the Boston emergency departments with dehydration, kidney or heart problems, or heat cramps during extreme heat, which makes all these problems worse. As Paul Biddinger, chief preparedness and continuity officer at MGB explained:

“The stress of the heat exacerbates those conditions, and we’ll see a 10 percent jump of people in the emergency department not just for heat illness, but also weakness or syncope or other conditions due to the heat.”

Developing AI to prevent heatstroke deaths

To address this, the nonprofit academic health system is working on an alert platform that uses AI to find patients who have health conditions or take medications that might make them particularly vulnerable to heat and warn them when a wave is coming, advising them on how to protect themselves.

At the same time, patients’ confidential health data will remain private, thanks to the included security features. Used together, personalized information, real-time weather data, and “actionable messages” might allow patients to better protect themselves. In Biddinger’s words:

“We think patients will pay more attention if it is their doctor, their hospital saying, ‘Hey, you’re at risk and here’s what to do,’ than if they just see on the news that it will be hot tomorrow.”

In the future, researchers, are hoping to introduce a chatbot function into the system, so patients can ask questions when they receive an alert, such as to help them identify cooling centers or public spaces with air conditioning where they go to stay cool.

Elsewhere, AI has stepped in as valuable help in medicine, including in cancer detection, where it demonstrates a near-perfect success rate, screening for deadly lung diseases before they get out of hand, identifying chronic liver disease from pictures during an echocardiogram, and medical transcription.