Dubai Health Authority - Innovation in Technology Development

Company: Dubai Health Authority
Company Description: With a mission to transform Dubai into a leading healthcare destination by fostering innovative and integrated care models and by enhancing community engagement, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) is the Government Department responsible for the provision of public health cares services in the Emirate of Dubai in addition to regulation of the Private Health Care Sector.
Nomination Category: Technology Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for the Innovation in Technology Development - Government

Nomination Title: Utilization of Artificial Intelligence towards early detection of Sepsis

Provide an essay of up to 625 words describing the nominee's innovative achievements since July 1 2018:

Sepsis is a very dangerous condition arising when the body’s response to an infection injures its own tissues and organs, potentially leading to death or significant morbidity. Since these infections are often resistant to antibiotics, they can rapidly lead to deteriorating clinical conditions, leading to death of one third of the cases. Globally, Sepsis is responsible for over 6 Million deaths yearly. DHA facilities witnessed26.37 % of its deaths due to sepsis.Even if treated, 7 out of 10 patients who were once treated for sepsis will continue to utilize a variety of healthcare services or will have chronic illnesses that require frequent medical care.

Yet, despite being a healthcare emergency, its warning signs and symptoms can be easily confused with many other diseases delaying early recognition & diagnosis. The World Health Organization has identified it as a global priority, issuing a dedicated report, namely “Improving the prevention, diagnosis and clinical management of sepsis” in 2017. As its efforts towards combatting sepsis, Dubai Health Authority’s internal calibers developed a protocol using artificial intelligence (AI) for prognosis & prediction of sepsis to try and prevent its numerous fatalities.

The team installed an innovative algorithm to constantly observe the condition of the patients and link health indicators & variables together to calculate a certain score called MEWS.

When the caretaker enters relevant vital signs into DHA’s Electronic Medical System, system automatically calculates the MEWS score using this algorithm.

If score surpasses a certain limit, an automatic warning is fired with a set of screening orders followed by preemptive treatments shall the screening result in a positive result. These orders include: Nursing instructions, Laboratory tests&Medications.

This allows the first hour of treatment to start immediately. Research shows that mortality from sepsis increases 8% for every hour the treatment is delayed. As many as 80% of sepsis deaths could be prevented with rapid diagnosis & treatment, as per Sepsis Alliance report.

The Workflow was implemented across all four DHA hospitals. The innovative AI workflow contributed to early identification of patients at risk of sepsis, early start of sepsis cases treatment, Improvement of sepsis patients’ outcomes & increased effectiveness of treatment & lowered levels of sepsis-due mortality across DHA hospitals.

The special feature of the workflow is that any healthcare provider with EPIC software can adopt it across the globe. EPIC is a largest health system Provider worldwide and a large percentage of healthcare facilities adopt its technologies, making the possibility to transfer this technology worldwide and realizing a global impact highly doable.

For the sake of knowledge transfer, DHA presented the Project Concept in international conferences in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia & USA.

In December 2018 the predicative analytic tool was implemented in Salama. From December 2018 to May 2019 25% of patients with sepsis were treated based on the AI feature with the sepsis alert firing in the Salama system 47,576 times.

The artificial intelligence system demonstrated between 89% & 97% accuracy across DHA’s hospitals that a patient was likely to deteriorate in the following 20 hours. This allowed for early intervention & life-saving treatment.

With less than a year of implementation, % of deaths due to sepsis decreased from 26.37% to 24% and 516 lives were saved till date through the prediction of developing Sepsis and were treated successfully – 230 Emergency Cases & 286 In Patients.

Upon analysis of the direct cost impact of Sepsis in one of DHA hospitals (Dubai Hospital), the average cost of sepsis treatments per patient amounted to 190,037 AED. Between Jan – August 2019, Dubai Hospital treated 201 sepsis cases, out of which 60 were treated pre-emptively thanks to the new AI technology, saving an estimated amount of 11.4 Million Dirhams over a 9 months period.