Clare Medical's AI-based diagnostic tool reduced the need for admissions and other interventions by ... [+] over 50% in clinical trials.

An artificial intelligence-based diagnostic tool has reduced hospital admissions by 51% among at-risk elderly patients, according to results of a trial released by health care provider Clare Medical.

Announcing the results of its trial on Wednesday, Clare Medical concluded that predicting which patients have a higher probability of experiencing medical "events" significantly reduces the probability of such events occurring. This is because its AI-based tool provides clinicians with the opportunity for early intervention.

The trial found that the use of AI-based diagnostics has significantly positive outcomes with respect to reducing a patient's risk of requiring a hospital visit within 30 days. At a time when the coronavirus pandemic is placing significant strain on the worlds health systems, such outcomes could end up saving substantial amounts of time and money for hospitals, not to mention the benefits for patients themselves.

"This diagnostic tool has the potential to be a paradigm shift in how we surveil and monitor patients. By providing an alert to physicians for high risk patients, we believe it provides a remarkable ability to intervene early and positively alter a patient's care trajectory," says Clare Medical CEO Ron Lipstein.

The study was conducted with predominantly elderly patients with at least one underlying medical condition. Compared to the general population, such patients are at high risk for a variety of clinically significant outcomes, including urinary tract infections, pneumonia, falls and fractures, the exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, worsening diabetes, and worsening chronic kidney disease.

However, by using its artificial intelligence-based toolwhich uses an algorithm to screen patients medical charts and dataClare Medicals team was able to identify 12.8% of the participating patients as being at a 30-day increased risk of requiring a hospital or emergency room visit. This resulted in physicians being notified and patient cases being reviewed and acted on. As a consequence, only 6.3% of patientsor 51% feweractually ended up requiring a hospital or ER visit.

Clare Medical estimates that a single hospital admission involving an elderly patient having several comorbidities costs more than $30,000.

At the same time, admission after the onset of a condition puts the patient themselves at greater risk. This risk is currently being heightened by the fact that the burdens of the coronavirus pandemic have made hospitals and health systems less able to screen patients in general.

For example, the UK Government estimated in July that declines in emergency care, adult social care, elective care and primary care could result in 10,000, 16,000, 12,500 and 1,400 excess deaths respectively over 12 months (the figure for elective care covers a five-year timeframe), assuming that Covid-19 care continues to impact medical treatment for other conditions.

This is the kind of problem that AI diagnostics could help ease. By reducing the time and resources needed to provide reliable indicators of likely health events and conditions, artificial intelligence-based tools could potentially make it easier for hospitals to confront Covid-19 while still continuing to screen patients for other diseases.

And reassuringly enough, Clare Medical is far from being the only company using AI to accelerate and improve diagnosis. In July, Israel-based medical data analytics startup Diagnostic Robotics signed a deal with the American medical centre Mayo Clinic, which will use its AI-based tools to speed up the process of diagnosing and triaging patients in hospitals and emergency rooms. Likewise, this year has produced its fair share of academic research indicating that AI algorithms are as "effective as radiologists" in screening for breast cancer, for instance.

The coronavirus pandemic has given hospitals extra impetus for involving artificial intelligence in the diagnostic process, while AI models have recently been developed for detecting asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19.

In other words, its highly unlikely that Clare Medical will be the last medical provider to trial and roll out the use of AI. Because with the coronavirus potentially staying with us for some years to come, and with the worlds population getting older, hospitals will have only more to do in the future, not less.

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Artificial Intelligence Platform Reduces Hospital Admissions By Over 50% In Trial - Forbes