Artificial Intelligence Helps Identify Acute Kidney Injury Up to Two Days Earlier

In January of this year, Wired Magazine published an article about a collaboration between The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Google parent Alphabet's DeepMind unit to create software powered by artificial intelligence that attempts to predict which patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are likely to develop acute kidney injury (AKI). The article stated that more than 50% of adults admitted to an ICU end up getting AKI, which is life-threatening. According to the article, the Department of Veterans Affairs contributed 700,000 medical records to the project. The goal of the project was to test whether artificial intelligence could be developed to help doctors better predict which patients were at risk for developing AKI so preventative measures could be taken sooner. It looks like artificial intelligence may in fact be able to help doctors identify which patients in the ICU are at serious risk of AKI.