AI accurately predicts 30-day readmission risk

Editor's Note

Researchers at New York University Langone Health, New York City, have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) computer program that predicts whether a newly discharged patient will be readmitted within 30 days, the June 7 HealthDay reports.

The AI program, named “NYUTron,” is a large language model that works “by predicting the best word to fill in a sentence, based on how likely real people would use a particular term in that context,” the report says.

In a study, NYUTron predicted about 80% of patients who were readmitted within 30 days, which was about a 5% improvement over a standard computer program that requires reformatting of electronic health record (EHR) data.

The researchers trained NYUTron using millions of clinical notes collected from EHRs of 336,000 patients who received care within the New York Langone hospital system between January 2011 and May 2020.