Artificial Intelligence to Improve Patient Care

In partnership with local health insurer, CDPHP, researchers from the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications (IDEA) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are using artificial intelligence to improve patient health by developing a better understanding of high needs patients and identifying aspects of care that lead to better outcomes. "It's not enough to just figure out who are the highest needs patients, you really need to know why and what approaches can help them," said Kristin Bennett, a Rensselaer math professor and associate director of IDEA. "Our approach develops explainable models that help us understand who these high needs patients are, why some people in this group do well, and some do not." The project builds on the "cadre" modeling technique developed by Bennett. As opposed to deep learning, in which a computer identifies a pattern but the path to its decision is not clear, cadre models bring another level of understanding into the equation.