Machine learning-assisted screening for cognitive impairment in the emergency department

Despite a high prevalence and association with poor outcomes, screening to identify cognitive impairment (CI) in the emergency department (ED) is uncommon. Identification of high-risk subsets of older adults is a critical challenge to expanding screening programs. In this study from HIP Investigator Dr. Brian Patterson, researchers developed and evaluated an automated screening tool to identify a subset of patients at high risk for CI.

In this secondary analysis of existing data collected for a randomized control trial, they developed machine-learning models to identify patients at higher risk of CI using only variables available in electronic health record (EHR). This study demonstrates that an algorithm based on EHR data can define a subset of patients at higher risk for CI.