Smart Dubai, DHA use Artificial Intelligence to save lives

Smart Dubai unveiled a new Artificial Intelligence, AI, use case in the healthcare sector that allows healthcare professionals to pre-emptively predict a patient’s condition by tracking six vital signs, including blood pressure, temperature, and the pulse, among others.

Nurses feed this data into the high-precision AI system, which analyses it to predict how a patient’s situation will progress, take the necessary precautions, and potentially save many lives.

This is part of Smart Dubai's AI Lab initiative, conducted in collaboration with the Dubai Health Authority, DHA, and IBM, to harness AI to propose practical solutions, develop sophisticated services, and improve people’s lives.

Thousands of patients across four hospitals – Rashid Hospital, Latifa Hospital, Dubai Hospital, and Hatta Hospital – were part of the proof of concept, PoC, where the system was trained to process the data of these patients.

Wesam Lootah, CEO of the Smart Dubai Government Establishment, emphasised the importance of AI technology to improve the lives of residents and visitors. He said, "Today, in collaboration with our strategic partners in the government and private sectors, and as part of our AI Lab initiative, we are introducing a new and unique experience that could potentially save countless lives. The technology offers a comprehensive reading of a patient's health, providing healthcare professionals enough time to intervene in case of an emergency."

Dr Younis Kazem, CEO of the Dubai Healthcare Corporation at the DHA, said the smart transformations taking place at the DHA facilities are a testimony to the authority’s commitment to follow the directions of the UAE Government and Dubai’s goal of transforming itself into a smart city that provides quality services to its people.

The PoC revealed that deteriorating health conditions in patients can be detected anywhere from one hour to 20 hours ahead with 90 to 98 percent accuracy. The pilot project also demonstrated that the system is capable of determining the precise moment when a patient’s condition is likely to deteriorate after leaving the intensive care unit.

The trial also revealed three main benefits the DHA and participating hospitals can look forward to, the first of which is an increased potential to save lives by means of a sophisticated system that draws on accurate data to pre-emptively determine critical cases and take the necessary precautions on time.

The second benefit pertains to better management of a hospital's resources, particularly doctors and nurses. And third, the system will enhance the performance of the medical crew by providing them the data with which they need to make sound decisions, and offer insights that would normally take years of experience in the medical sector to accumulate.

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