Study Reveals AI's Ability to Identify Patients at Suicide Risk
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New Delhi, Jan 5 (NationPress) Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to aid physicians in pinpointing patients who may be at risk of suicide, which could significantly enhance prevention efforts within typical medical frameworks, as demonstrated by recent research.
The findings, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, evaluated two methodologies—automated pop-up alerts that disrupted the physician's workflow versus a more subdued approach that merely presented risk data in the patient's electronic health records.
The researchers discovered that the interruptive alerts were substantially more successful, prompting doctors to perform suicide risk assessments in 42 percent of instances compared to only 4 percent with the passive system.
Colin Walsh, an associate professor of biomedical informatics, medicine, and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, noted that a significant number of individuals who commit suicide have consulted a healthcare provider within the year preceding their death, often for issues unrelated to mental health.
The team evaluated whether their AI model, known as the Vanderbilt Suicide Attempt and Ideation Likelihood model (VSAIL), could effectively encourage physicians in three neurology clinics to assess patients for suicide risk during regular visits.
“Universal screening is not feasible in every situation. We designed VSAIL to assist in recognizing high-risk patients and initiating targeted screening discussions,” Walsh mentioned.
The VSAIL model examines standard data from electronic health records to determine a patient's 30-day risk of attempting suicide.
The researchers proposed that comparable systems could be implemented in various medical environments.
Healthcare organizations must weigh the efficacy of interruptive alerts against their possible downsides, Walsh remarked.
The results imply that automated risk identification, paired with well-structured alerts, could enhance our capacity to identify more patients in need of suicide prevention services, the authors stated.
Research indicates that 77 percent of individuals who die by suicide have interacted with primary care providers within the year leading up to their death.
