- विज्ञापन -
New Delhi: A group of researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. has developed an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to assist doctors in recognizing patients who may be at risk for suicide.
The AI system, named the Vanderbilt Suicide Attempt and Ideation Likelihood model (VSAIL), has the potential to enhance prevention strategies in standard medical environments. The researchers tested VSAIL across three neurology clinics at VUMC, analyzing data from 7,732 patient visits over a six-month period to assess suicide risk during routine check-ups.
The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, indicated that the AI model successfully generated 596 screening alerts by examining routine data from electronic health records and predicting a patient’s likelihood of a suicide attempt within 30 days.
Additionally, the team compared two methods of alerting doctors: automatic pop-up alerts that interrupted their workflow, and a passive system that presented risk information within the patient’s electronic chart. The results showed a significant difference, with the interruptive alerts leading to suicide risk assessments in 42 percent of the cases, while only 4 percent of assessments occurred with the passive notifications.
While the researchers acknowledged that universal screening may not be applicable in all contexts, they emphasized that VSAIL could effectively help identify high-risk patients and stimulate crucial screening discussions. However, they also pointed out a potential issue with interruptive alerts possibly causing “alert fatigue” among physicians due to repetitive automated notifications, and they called for further research into this matter.
