Analytics Takes an Unusual Turn at PeraHealth

Data scientists in all fields have learned to take data from unusual places. You’d think that monitoring people in a hospital for changes in their conditions would be easier than other data-driven tasks, such as tracking planets in far-off solar systems, but in all cases some creativity is needed. That’s what PeraHealth, a surveillance system for hospital patients, found out while develop alerts for clinicians. It’s remarkably hard to identify at-risk patients in hospitals, even with so many machines and staff busy monitoring them. For instance, a nurse on each shift may note in the patient’s record that certain vital signs are within normal range, and no one might notice that the vital signs are gradually trending worse and worse–until a crisis occurs. PeraHealth identifies at-risk patients through analytics and dashboards that doctors and nurses can pull up. They can see trends over a period of several shifts, and quickly see which patients in the ward are the most at risk. PeraHealth is a tool for both clinical surveillance and communication. Michael Rothman, co-founder and Chief Science Officer, personally learned the dangers of insufficient monitoring in 2003 when a low-risk operation on his mother led to complications and her unfortunate death. Rothman and his brother decided to make something positive from the tragedy. They got permission from the hospital to work there for three weeks, applying Michael’s background in math and data ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Clinical Decision Support Healthcare AI Healthcare Analytics PeraHealth Source Type: blogs