VA partners with DeepMind to identify risks during hospital stays

The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced a research partnership with Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind that will tackle issues concerning patient deterioration during hospital care. Using a dataset comprised of 700,000 historical, de-personalized health records, the machine learning platform will help the VA identify risk factors for deterioration while predicting its onset. "Medicine is more than treating patients' problems," VA Secretary David J. Shulkin, MD, said in a statement. "Clinicians need to be able to identify risks to help prevent disease. This collaboration is an opportunity to advance the quality of care for our nation's veterans by predicting deterioration and applying interventions early."