Spotting C. diff Risks with ‘Hospital-Specific Approach’ to Big Data

HealthLeaders Media April 11, 2018
Steven Porter

Researchers say the key is in a facility-specific model, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

A team of medical researchers trying to predict which hospital patients face the highest risk of contracting Clostridium difficile(C. diff) reviewed more than a quarter-million electronic health records (EHR) with a simple hypothesis.

Perhaps the key to understanding C. diff risk factors is context, they suggested. So the team of researchers from the University of Michigan, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) devised a project to test whether risk factors vary from one facility to the next.

Jenna Wiens, PhD, a senior author on the paper and an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann...

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