Health informatics firm Pen CS has introduced a novel clinical audit tool, “The Risk of Hospitalization Report,” on its CAT platform. Using a predictive risk algorithm, the tool estimates the likelihood of unplanned hospital visits within a year using diverse factors like patient demographics, health conditions, and lifestyle attributes.
Pen CS, a company specializing in health informatics technology, has unveiled a novel clinical audit tool. This new offering is designed to assess the likelihood of a patient needing an unscheduled hospital visit within the next year.
The Pen CS CAT platform now includes a Risk of Hospitalization Report function, which leverages a predictive risk algorithm to anticipate unplanned hospital visits. The algorithm assesses a wide range of factors, such as patient demographics, socio-economic indexes, physiological data, medication history, chronic health conditions, pathology categories, and lifestyle attributes.
The predictive model, built with anonymized patient data, is a product of collaboration between CSIRO and its partners. Before launch, the model underwent rigorous testing on over 10,000 patients across 120 healthcare services.
The context for this development is alarming. Government data from 2017–2018 reported almost 750,000 instances of avoidable hospitalizations in Australia, costing the country’s healthcare system between A$2.5 billion ($1.6 billion) and A$4.8 billion ($3.2 billion).
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, these hospitalizations can be reduced with preventative health measures and early disease management. However, the difficulty lies in accurately identifying those most at risk. The Risk of Hospitalization Report from Pen CS addresses this issue, aiding practices in focusing their interventions and evaluations.
Edweana Wenkart, Pen CS CEO, emphasized the value of this tool, stating it’s crucial for providing targeted care to individuals with chronic and complex health issues, minimizing hospitalizations, and ultimately enhancing national health by boosting the effectiveness of general practices.
Wenkart added that implementing GP-designed proactive care pathways could potentially prevent 75,000 hospital admissions annually, leading to savings of between A$247.5 million ($165 million) and A$480 million ($319 million) for the healthcare system.
In a related trend, the CSIRO has developed another AI tool capable of predicting patient deterioration. This clinical decision-support tool utilizes EMR data to predict critical drops in a patient’s vital signs and alerts staff of a potentially critical event like death, cardiac arrest, or unscheduled ICU admission.
Dr. Kean-Seng Lim, Pen CS Chief Medical Advisor, praised the Risk of Hospitalization Report, saying that the Pen CS CAT platform enhances forward-planning and health interventions by providing better insights.
