AI Could Provide Moment-by-Moment Nursing for a Hospital’s Sickest Patients

Behnood Gholami, Wassim M. Haddad and James M. Bailey, AI Could Provide Moment-by-Moment Nursing for a Hospital’s Sickest Patients, IEEE Spectrum, 24 Sep 2018

At our company, Autonomous Healthcare, based in Hoboken, N.J., we’re designing and building some of the first AI systems for the ICU. These technologies are intended to provide vigilant and nuanced care, as if an expert were at the patient’s bedside every second, carefully calibrating treatment. Such systems could relieve the burden on the overtaxed staff in critical-care units. What’s more, if the technology helps patients get out of the ICU sooner, it could bring down the skyrocketing costs of health care. We’re focusing initially on hospitals in the United States, but our technology could be useful all around the world as populations age and the prevalence of chronic diseases grows. 

The benefits could be huge. In the United States, ICUs are among the most expensive components of the health care system. About 55,000 patients are cared for in an ICU every day, with the typical daily cost ranging from US $3,000 to $10,000. The cumulative cost is more than $80 billion per year.