Can AI improve health care? Doctors at UCHealth are trying to find out.
Thanks to John Ingold and the Colorado Sun for highlighting our ongoing work to defeat sepsis at UCHealth using predictive algorithms and the Virtual Health Center (VHC). I appreciate my colleague Amy Hassell for the outstanding team she leads in this work.
Together we have reduced mortality, by the equivalent of 800+ lives saved per year from sepsis and other in-hospital deteriorations.
We have moved our internal process. We began in 2018 by showing everything to the bedside team. No change in outcomes.
Then we put the Virtual Health Team as a back-up service to the primary team. Slight improvement (200 more lives saved per year over baseline).
Now, we have the Virtual Health Team as primary service, both detecting deterioration and taking direct action, with the patient’s primary bedside team in the background. This dramatically improves speed and consistency of response to a complicated disease requiring a coordinated approach: now 800+ more lives saved per year from in-hospital deterioration.
We are happy with our internal improvements and are always hungry for more opportunities. Thanks to Amy and the amazing VHC.
