AI-powered clinical assistant devise reduces adverse events by over 90%
Brooklyn, NY, May 6, 2024 — Maimonides Medical Center is celebrating five years of its pioneering use of the Medical Brain®, an automated, clinical digital assistant used to help providers identify emerging health risks and care gaps in real time and improve safety in its OB/GYN labor and delivery services. The 24/7 artificial intelligence (AI)-powered monitoring system has helped providers nearly eliminate adverse events, which can be potentially harmful for pregnant patients or unborn fetuses. Maimonides was the first hospital nationwide to implement such an AI tool for OB/GYN care.
“Labor and delivery is very dynamic. A lot is happening at the same time, so things can quickly go from fine to problematic for mom and baby,” said Scott Chudnoff, MD, Chair of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Maimonides Medical Center. “With the Medical Brain, we have a tool that allows us to identify trends or detect when an adverse outcome is about to occur. It’s an early warning system that alerts us to critical events so we can step in to mitigate risks during labor and delivery and ensure the safety of our patients.”
Implemented at Maimonides in partnership with the New York-based healthcare technology company healthPrecision, the Medical Brain AI is a high-precision clinical assistant with clinical decision support that monitors patient data continuously and detects concerning clinical situations in real-time. The Medical Brain AI identifies potential adverse events—dangerous situations providers should always strive to prevent for pregnant patients. If detected, the Medical Brain notifies providers to take timely corrective action to prevent those events from becoming greater problems.
This system, which can be used in multiple languages, gathers a patient’s health data from their medical record and assesses it using evidence-based protocols and clinical and practice guidelines from recognized organizations, like those of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Maimonides-specific protocols, and measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
“This is a high-precision, real-time system that accurately sees and analyzes the complete clinical picture for each patient and identifies any gaps in care or documentation,” said Shoshana Haberman, MD, PhD, Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Medical Informatics at Maimonides Medical Center. “It uses patient-specific data to alert the healthcare team to situations that need immediate intervention, adding an extra layer of security and greater safety for patients in the labor and delivery process.”
To determine the impact of the Medical Brain and its ability to help reduce adverse events, Dr. Chudnoff, Dr. Haberman and their colleagues evaluated the technology in a research study comparing rates before the Medical Brain was implemented against those achieved after. They focused on some of the most important adverse events, including:
A lack of antibiotics given to group B strep-positive patients in labor to prevent dangerous infections in newborns
A lack of magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures in patients with severe high blood pressure
Not stopping Pitocin (a medication that stimulates contractions during labor) in patients who have a fetus with a concerning heart rate
Based on the findings, the Medical Brain helped reduce dangerous adverse events by nearly 91%. Before implementation, nearly 118 patients per 1,000 experienced an adverse event. That rate fell dramatically after the Medical Brain was implemented—to roughly 11 out of 1,000. The period of the study was between July 2018 and May 2022, during which providers in Maimonides’ Labor & Delivery Unit delivered 28,300 babies.
“The Medical Brain has been extremely successful in reducing these negative—and avoidable—events,” Chudnoff said. “The technology is unique. It directly interacts with clinicians through our mobile phone apps. The physician can also speak directly into the app knowing the Medical Brain will coordinate communication. We never know when problems are going to emerge. If you aren’t with a patient or actively looking at a patient’s information, you probably won’t see it. Now, with the Medical Brain, we are proactively alerted when there are concerning situations, and we can respond to situations in a more meaningful and timely way.”
In addition to labor and delivery, Maimonides uses the Medical Brain for outpatient primary care and cardiology services. As a next step, Maimonides plans to expand use of the Medical Brain for patients to report any new symptoms or health changes to their provider.
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About HealthPrecision and the Medical Brain
HealthPrecision is a health care technology company specializing in advanced AI-powered clinical solutions, founded by Dr. Eyal Ephrat, CEO, a Perinatologist, and a renowned leader in the field of clinical decision support, and Sonia Ben Yehuda, specializing in bringing innovative healthcare technologies to market. healthPrecision’s flagship product, the Medical Brain AI Platform, combines automation and high-precision decision support to empower providers and their patients with 24/7 monitoring and evidence-based care orchestration to improve outcomes at lower costs and streamline provider workflow for greater efficiency and satisfaction. healthPrecision is dedicated to helping health systems, provider groups and ACOs succeed with the Medical Brain’s AI powered clinical assistant, placing personalized, high-precision information in the hands of providers and their patients, forging a deep and effective partnership between them, and enabling success in the new era of value-based care. With a patient-centric approach and proven outcomes, the healthPrecision team of clinicians and experts in AI, machine learning and data science is at the forefront of the AI revolution in health care.
Maimonides Health is Brooklyn’s largest healthcare system, serving over 320,000 patients each year through the system’s 3 hospitals, 1,800+ physicians and more than 80 community-based practices and outpatient centers. The system is anchored by Maimonides Medical Center, one of the nation’s largest independent teaching hospitals and home to centers of excellence in numerous specialties and Maimonides Midwood Community Hospital (formerly New York Community Hospital), a 130-bed adult medical-surgical hospital; and Maimonides Children’s Hospital, Brooklyn’s only children’s hospital and only pediatric trauma center.
Maimonides’ clinical programs rank among the best in the country for patient outcomes, including its Heart and Vascular Institute, Neurosciences Institute, Bone and Joint Center, and Cancer Center. Maimonides is an affiliate of Northwell Health and a major clinical training site for SUNY Downstate College of Medicine. For additional information, please visit www.maimo.org and follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.