Abu Dhabi health authorities now using artificial intelligence to predict patients’ future disease risk
Risk profile for patients created from clinical data such as diagnosis, lab results
Abu Dhabi: The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DOH) and Malaffi, the health information exchange system, are using AI (artificial intelligence) to predict patients’ future risk of disease.
Embedded in the Malaffi provider portal, the Patient Risk Profile will further support a more informed and efficient clinical decision-making for better quality healthcare and patient outcomes.
The functionality predicts the level of risk for an individual patient to develop certain chronic diseases or suffer an acute event. The technology behind Malaffi’s risk management solution uses advanced AI technologies and machine learning algorithms, to build predictive risk models based on the available Emirate’s population-level demographic and clinical data in Malaffi.
Preventive healthcare
Dr Jamal Mohammed Al Kaabi, DOH undersecretary, said: “We are committed to developing a healthcare ecosystem that has become among the leading and innovative systems in the world by deploying the latest artificial intelligence digital technologies to improve the quality of healthcare for the residents of Abu Dhabi and the region. Such innovation is pivotal to moving to a preventive-based healthcare approach that will help the transition to value-based care whilst achieving our vision of a healthy Abu Dhabi.”
Robert Denson, acting CEO of Malaffi, said: “We can now maximise the clinical big data and the population risk platform that is already available to the DOH to deliver further value to the Malaffi users. We are proud to be one of the few HIEs [health information exchanges] in the world to extend such functionality to the clinicians through the Provider Portal. This will empower providers with actionable insights to improve the health of their patients by proactively and preventively addressing their health needs.”
Dr Bakr Saadoon Ismail, Informatics Physician, Health Operations Management, Ambulatory Healthcare Services at Abu Dhabi Health Services (SEHA); Member of the Clinical Advisory Committee of Malaffi, said: “This predictive tool will help us efficiently evaluate the risks for patients individually and help inform decisions regarding treatment, medication and advice specific to their profile.”
How it works
The Malaffi Patient Risk Profile displays risk scores for each patient against a list of prevalent chronic conditions such as diabetes, congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic kidney disease (CKD), hypertension; and acute events such as a heart attack, stroke, and others. Individual risk scores help clinicians make informed decisions and interventions to manage and prevent individuals from developing potential diseases or being admitted to a hospital.
To identify patients at risk, the solution currently utilises clinical data such as diagnoses, chronic conditions and laboratory results. To further improve the accuracy, medication information will be added to the model in future releases.
Malaffi connects almost the entire sector in Abu Dhabi, including all hospitals and 2,000 public and private healthcare facilities, and provides access to more than 45,000 authorised users to 900 million patient records for more than 7 million patients, “according to the highest standards” of privacy and information security.