Leveraging Big Data to Predict Death

Chalk “predict death” off the list of “what computers can’t do.” A supercomputer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Mass., can decipher the likelihood of a patient’s imminent demise with uncanny accuracy.

Patients at the hospital are linked up to the machine, which leverages all available patient data — doctors visits, lab results, medications and vital signs — to generate a rapid diagnostic assessment. This alone would be a tremendous tool for helping doctors provide better treatment, but the real magic comes from applying machine learning jujitsu to an ever-growing body of patient data. By comparing current scenarios with past outcomes from more than 250,000 individuals over the last 30 years, the program is able to determine the likelihood of current and future medical problems, such as heart attacks, infections, cancers — and, yes, even death.

“We can predict with almost a 96 percent confidence that a patient will have this probability of dying,” Beth Israel Project Lead Dr. Steve Horng told BBC News, “so if the computer says you are going to die, you probably will die within the next 30 days.”

You can read the rest of the article here: www.hpcwire.com/2015/09/25/this-hospital-computer-knows-when-your-days-are-numbered/