The Machine that Predicts Your Death

As macabre as this may sound, a computer algorithm can predict your death. The computer algorithm created by Google actually studied 175,639 points about a woman who was admitted to the hospital. While the staff at the hospital gave a 9.3% chance that she would die during hopsitalization, the computer program predicted it at 19.9%. Yes, she did die during her stay at the hospital.

While the death itself is a tragedy, it did showcase the computer algorithm’s ability to sift through numerous medical records and come up with an inference that was fairly accurate. The electronic records of patients have always been available to hospital staff, but the doctors and nurses usually do not have the time to go through all the paperwork involved with each and every patient.

Most of them rely on the latest results of tests conducted on the patient for the current treatment options. However Associate Professor Nigam Shah, of the Stanford University, who co-authored Google’s research paper is convinced that this program is set to make the predictive model much more accurate than a human being’s rendering.

Part of the reasoning behind this is the fact that all the paper work ever involved with the patient from diagnostic tests and medications prescribed are easily available to the computer. This is a science project that will change the way doctors look at their patients.