Artificial intelligence can improve intravenous nutrition for premature babies, a Stanford Medicine study has shown. The study, which will publish March 25 in Nature Medicine, is among the first to demonstrate how an AI algorithm can enable doctors to make better clinical decisions for sick newborns.
The algorithm uses information in preemies’ electronic medical records to predict which nutrients they need and in what quantities. The AI tool was trained on data from almost 80,000 past prescriptions for intravenous nutrition, which was linked to information about how the tiny patients fared.
Using AI to help prescribe IV nutrition could reduce medical errors, save time and money, and make it easier to care for preemies in low-resource settings, the researchers said. IV nutrition, also known as total parenteral…