Fighting HAIs with AI
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) continue to be an ongoing threat to patients. âDespite the best care, patients get infections,â Brian Gross, business lead, genomics for infectious disease at Philips, told MD+DI. Because they are âtechnically avoidable, thereâs pressure on hospitals to drive their numbers down.â
Healthcare system professionals have struggled with two main problems when trying to identify and act on infection risks, Gross explained. âThe problem is two-fold. First, because of current tools, all infections look the same,â he said. For instance, if a hospital diagnoses three babies with MRSA, the NICU may be shut down out of fear that the infection is spreading from infant to infant, but it may in fact have come from a parent or visitor. Such action is often taken before the source of infection is identified, Gross said. âInfections may look the same under the microscopeâthey are only differentiable if you look at their genomics,â he said.
The second problem hospital systems often experience involves âfalse negatives,â Gross explained. âInfections are being transmitted, but no one knows it until there are multiple patients infected.â
Better data analysis might be able to help hospitals tackle these issues an...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Daphne Allen Tags: Software Source Type: news
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