Innovation corner: The next era of patient care
Artificial intelligence platform accurately predicts surgical complications
Complications after surgery can pose many challenges for both physicians and patients. Now, UF researchers have confirmed their artificial intelligence system accurately helps doctors predict and manage these problems.
Researchers believe the system is unique in its ability to accurately predict postoperative complications by automatically acquiring patients’ medical data and delivering it to doctors’ mobile devices. The system, known as MySurgeryRisk, is at least as accurate as physicians in predicting surgical complications and sometimes more so, newly published findings show.
At the heart of MySurgeryRisk is an algorithm powered by machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, or AI. UF Health researchers have spent years developing and testing the system. Using nearly seven years of data from more than 74,000 procedures involving approximately 58,000 adult patients, the system was consistently able to match surgeons’ accuracy in predicting surgical outcomes, researchers found. An accurate AI system can benefit both doctors and patients by augmenting medical decision-making and reducing complications.
More broadly, researchers say the system harnesses AI to process clinical data in real time, creating an “analytic pipeline” that pushes valuable results to surgeons’ mobile devices.
Azra Bihorac, MD, MS, senior associate dean for research affairs, and Tezcan Ozrazgat Baslanti, PhD, review patient surgery data using the MySurgeryRisk artificial intelligence system.
Photo by Jesse S. Jones
The latest findings are large-scale, high-level evidence that the MySurgeryRisk system performs well in scenarios that closely resemble true clinical settings, said Azra Bihorac, MD, MS, senior associate dean for research affairs at the College of Medicine, a lead researcher on the MySurgeryRisk project and co-director of UF’s Intelligent Critical Care Center.
An AI system like MySurgeryRisk is meant to augment surgeons’ skill and experience as well as expedite their decision-making, Bihorac said. While planning surgery, the discovery of higher risks could prompt a doctor-patient conversation about whether surgery is truly appropriate.
It can also be a reliable bellwether: Knowing that a patient is at high risk of complications allows surgeons to be more strategic in the operating room, such as using individualized blood pressure management.
The new findings build on two other successful validations of MySurgeryRisk. Next, the researchers want to expand validation testing of MySurgeryRisk at other sites around the state and make the system more widely available on mobile platforms, Bihorac said.
