How big data can change intensive care

A team of data scientists, researchers and clinicians from UNSW Sydney have won a major prize at the second annual Healthcare Artificial Intelligence Datathon held at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The two-day event – organised jointly by the National University Health System (NUHS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and NUS – hosted more than 200 local and international data scientists and clinicians last weekend to address current problems in healthcare with the latest machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. The joint UNSW-NUS team won first prize in the Critical Care Track, competing against eight other teams to analyse clinical data contained in the MIT/Philips eICU Collaborative Research Database, comprising information on more than 200,000 patients treated in intensive care units in US hospitals over the past five years. The UNSW-NUS team included researchers Oluwadamisola Sotade, Dr Mark Hanly and Oisin Fitzgerald from UNSW's Centre for Big Data Research in Health, Dr Tim Churches, data scientist from the Ingham Institute for Applied Medical Research and UNSW South Western Sydney Clinical School, and Dr Peter Straka from UNSW Mathematics and Statistics. "The installation of next-generation electronic medical records systems in ICUs and throughout hospitals enable very sophisticated machine-learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to be developed to assist busy clinicians in patient care and treatment decision making." said Dr Churches.