Google uses AI to predict mortality

Program looks at whether patients will live or die in 24 hours.

Dr. Google might not have much of a bedside manner — she’s an algorithm, after all — but if she says you’re soon to be “expired,” she claims to be about 95 percent accurate, and you might want to start planning that last meal.

An elite team of computer scientists and medical experts from Google and three major U.S. universities believe they’ve found the best way yet to predict whether a hospitalized patient will end up leaving via the front doors or the loading dock at the morgue.

As might be expected from research led by Google, the software for accomplishing this task relies on artificial intelligence, which has become a key focus in virtually all areas of the Mountain View company’s operations.

In a recently released paper, which was not peer reviewed, the researchers claim their AI-based software, based on AI known as “deep learning,” does a better job at predicting patient outcomes than other methods currently available.

“These models outperformed state-of-the-art traditional predictive models in all cases,” the paper said.

To make its predictions, the software uses medical-records data including patient demographics, previous diagnoses and procedures, lab results and vital signs.

Top of the list of outcomes predicted is “inpatient mortality,” in which the patient is reported as “expired.”

But the software goes beyond the question of life and death, to answer questions important to patients as well as hospital administrators and bean counters. Unplanned readmissions to the medical facility within 30 days are also covered, as well as probable length of stay and diagnoses, the latter of which is delineated using hospital billing codes.

Both companies have posted large increases in online sales recently.

Kohl’s, meanwhile, let Amazon inside its doors. The department store chain opened Amazon shops within its stores, selling Amazon’s voice-activated Echo devices and other products. It also installed lockers where shoppers could pick up Amazon orders.

But others weren’t so quick to make changes. When toy seller Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy protection last year, it mentioned Amazon in its filing several times, saying that the online retailer’s low prices were hard to match. And it said its Babies R Us chain lost customers to Amazon’s subscription services, which allowed parents to receive diapers at their doorstep automatically. Toys R Us blamed its “old technology infrastructure” for not offering subscriptions.

Supermarket shifts

Amazon’s purchase of Austin-based Whole Foods Market also pushed grocery retailers to look at how they can improve their online ordering and delivery services.

Some have partnered with delivery service Instacart. Walmart has expanded its online ordering and store pickup service. And Target recently bought grocery-delivery service Shipt.

Amazon hasn’t made major changes to Whole Foods yet. It has, however, lowered prices on some goods, such as milk, bananas and organic kale. And it installed areas in some locations to sell Kindles and Echos.

But last month it offered a hint at how it envisions the future of grocery shopping. It opened a store in its hometown of Seattle with no cashiers or registers. Instead, shoppers scan a smartphone app to enter Amazon Go, grab what they want and they are automatically charged for their merchandise when they leave.

Health care

Details on the new health care company Amazon announced with Berkshire and JPMorgan are slim. But

Amazon hasn’t made major changes to Whole Foods yet. It has, however, lowered prices on some goods.

experts say Amazon has the ability to shake up the industry.

It already has a connection with shoppers if the company wants to expand beyond employees, says Kate McCarthy, a senior analyst at Forrester. And it has the infrastructure, too: Amazon lockers, which are already in many supermarkets and convenience stores, could be used to deliver prescriptions, says McCarthy. “Amazon can do just about anything,” she says.

But the complex world of health care regulation could slow it down.

It’s a “complicated space,” says Idris Adjerid, a professor at University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.