In Hospitals Where Alarms Can Be Easily Missed, Can AI Help Predict Crises Before They Strike?
Hospital command centers, where a technician watches patients' vital signs for irregularities, have proliferated across the country. The need for such facilities in health care has increased in recent decades, as an array of monitoring devices produces tens of thousands of alarms on a daily basis, to the point where medical professionals tune out the ones that can signal a life-threatening event. In other health technology news: cyberattacks, breaches and an upgraded treadmill.
Hospital command centers have proliferated across the country in recent years, with medical centers from Oregon to Florida deploying them to tackle a range of data-monitoring tasks, such as maximizing bed capacity, calibrating staffing levels, and detecting the onset of sepsis, a life-threatening response to infection that is a common killer in hospitals. Recent advances in artificial intelligence promise to help hospitals identify new warning signs of patient deterioration and intervene earlier in the process. Administrators of command centers at Johns Hopkins and Yale New Haven Hospital both said they are exploring the use of machine learning to deliver more timely care. (Ross, 5/13)
Hospitals are pushing medical-device makers to improve cyber defenses of their internet-connected infusion pumps, biopsy imaging tables and other health-care products as reports of attacks rise. Rattled by recent global cyberattacks, U.S. hospitals are conducting tests to detect weaknesses in specific devices, and asking manufacturers to reveal the proprietary software running the products in order to identify vulnerabilities. In some cases, hospitals have canceled orders and rejected bids for devices that lacked safety features. (Evans and Loftus, 5/12)
Providers, health plans and their business associates reported 44 data breaches to the federal government last month. That's the highest number of healthcare breaches reported in a single month since HHS' Office for Civil Rights began maintaining its online database of healthcare breaches in 2010, surpassing the previous record鈥攅xactly one year ago, April 2018鈥攚hen healthcare groups reported 42 breaches to the agency. (Cohen, 5/10)
On a recent evening, Elizabeth Ewens was in the middle of an intense run workout. Her coach told her to kick it up, so she did and received encouragement from a fellow runner. She finished the workout feeling good. While Ewens鈥檚 evening workout sounds like what running groups around the world do several nights a week, she was actually in her home, live-streaming a treadmill class, complete with motivational instructor, music and leader board, to a monitor on her screen. (Yu, 5/12)
