Postoperative delirium (also known as emergent delirium) is a condition that sometimes occurs in people who have undergone general anesthesia. It occurs more frequently in older people than in young people or children and, among other symptoms, it can cause confusion, problems thinking or psychomotor agitation.
These problems can occur even weeks or months after having undergone surgery and the studies carried out up to this point have not yet clearly determined what causes may cause them. It is estimated that more than half of elderly people can suffer from it. With the aim of improving prevention, early diagnosis, care and treatment, Hospital del Mar, Sabadell Digital (Banco Sabadell Group) and Microsoft have decided to join forces to improve both prevention and treatment.
To do this, they organized a datathon, (or data hackathon), an initiative increasingly used by companies and institutions around the world that, through the massive use of data, seeks to respond to a problem. Hackathons (a computer term that arises from combining the concepts of hacker and marathon) bring together as large a number as possible of computer scientists and technicians from various disciplines who, for a short period of time, collaborate or compete with each other, organized in teams. , to find an answer to a challenge.
Usually, a period of 24 or 48 hours is granted for this and they are provided with the necessary spaces and means to facilitate the emergence of new and disruptive solutions. As an example of this phenomenon, we could cite the hackathon that NASA organized in Malaga this September. Under the name Space Apps Challenge, it brought together more than 31,000 people in the city, thus becoming the largest in the world.
In this case, the call was held at the offices of Sabadell Digital in Sabadell, in Vallès Occidental. About fifty of the company's data analysts will participate in the challenge, through a corporate volunteering project with the Fundación Amics del Hospital del Mar.
The experts, divided into teams and for two days – September 28 and 29 – tried to generate algorithms that would allow them to detect patients at greatest risk of suffering an episode of delirium. Their work is completely voluntary and had the support of Microsoft in the technical section, providing the necessary tools to carry out the experience. The project had the collaboration of NTT Data.
To achieve this, a series of groups or work teams were organized to which 8,000 medical records of patients over 70 years of age, selected from among 50,000 operated on at the center, were provided.
The challenge posed to the teams was twofold. In the first phase, standardize all the information in such a way that after analyzing it it would be possible to obtain conclusions; a second phase, trying to find common medical patterns that would allow us to predict, based on previously established medical profiles, which patients have a greater predisposition to experience this pathology. Which would obviously allow us to improve the level of attention given to them. All this, using, among other technologies, artificial intelligence.
It is a “very ambitious and complex project”, as recognized by the Director of Innovation at Hospital del Mar, Dr. Jordi Martínez. “Developing this type of tools can help us decisively to confront a very prevalent pathology. For this reason, having the collaboration of institutions such as Sabadell Digital and Microsoft, with extensive experience in managing large volumes of data and a very powerful team of Data Scientists, offers us a unique possibility to move forward. There is a lot of talk about the dangers and possible risks involved in the use of artificial intelligence, and very little about the great possibilities it also brings us. This datathon is an excellent example of these positive aspects,” he explains. Hospital del Mar will be the owner of all intellectual property rights derived from the result of the project.
Delirium affects between 4 and 53% of frail patients undergoing major surgery, indicating a high degree of underdiagnosis. It especially affects elderly people and worsens their prognosis, prolongs their hospital stay and increases readmissions. The lack of tools for early diagnosis worsens their care, which is not optimal.
This lack of early diagnosis is especially worrying if the delirium is hypoactive, since the symptoms are more subtle and may go unnoticed. It is very likely that there will be undiagnosed cases for this reason and that aggravates the problem,” explains Dr. Juan Fernández Candil, associate physician in the Anesthesiology Service at Hospital del Mar. “Having these tools will mean a reduction in complications, such as falls, loss of catheters and other devices and the use of mechanical restraints, with fewer days of hospitalization,” says Dr. Isabel Ramos, associate physician in the Surgical Resuscitation Unit of the same service.
In this sense, Luis Echavarri, head of Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at Banco Sabadell, highlights that participating in this type of initiatives is perfectly aligned with the Social Responsibility objectives of our entity. And the truth is that it is not particularly difficult for us to bring together people interested in collaborating in activities like this. Fortunately, we have a high percentage of professionals in our team willing to collaborate in all types of solidarity initiatives.
