IBM link-up to improve hospital care for babies

Computer giant IBM is working with University College Cork and Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) to help improve the long-term outcomes for babies in intensive care.

The Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Researchers at the university and hospital have pooled their database of newborn electroencephalogram recordings and machine learning expertise with IBM’s big data analytics stream so seizures and other brain complications associated with small, sick, and premature infants can now be automatically detected. Once detected, alarms will then be immediately sent to on-call specialists.

Seizures or fits in newborn babies are classed as a medical emergency and require urgent treatment. However, they are impossible to detect without continuous brain monitoring using electroencephalogram recordings.

Specialist expertise is required for interpretation of these recordings and, all too often, no such expert is on-hand in neonatal intensive care units, which can result in important brain events being missed.

The centre’s director, Professor Geraldine Boylan, said the collaboration with IBM will help shape the neonatal intensive care unit of the future, where it can integrate all vital signs monitoring including heart rate, blood pressure, oxygenation, and brain activity into measures that provide useful information for the clinician.

“Computers can process this vast amount of information faster than humans. Analytics that can interrogate this data could change the face of neonatology and improve outcomes for the sickest and most vulnerable members of society,” she said.

Big data and analytics leader at IBM UK and Ireland, Dixit Shah, said technology was becoming helping to provide higher standards of patient care.

“IBM is working with several healthcare organisations to shape a more patient-centric health system, by using advanced analytics technology to generate, track and share accurate information in real time.”