The AI identifies patients with a high risk of developing diabetes type 2.

Artificial intelligence can now assign a probability score to a patient’s likelihood of developing diabetes 2. Scientists at Sanford Health, led by Robert Menzie, lead data scientist, have created an AI algorithm that can flag high-risk patients early on, thus giving them time to control the disease before it can lead to complications such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease. (Sanford Health)

How it works

The algorithm developed by Sanford scientists compares five years of the medical history of a patient with the histories of similar patients that were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Assessing the data across about 800 different values, the AI then generates a risk score that reflects how likely the person is to turn diabetic in the near future. Along with this data, the system also details the principal factors that led to the patient’s score.

Physicians can use this early warning system to conduct further diagnostics of the patient to assess control actions.

“What it’s doing is computing all that information so that the provider can do what we really want them to do: spend time with the patient. Because that’s what AI can’t do. It can tell you a lot from their electronic medical record. But the provider is the only one who can tell you what’s the home life like, what’s the patient been feeling for the last 30 days,” Menzie said. “Those socioeconomic components make up way more of a person’s health than what’s in the EMR.”

Scott Boyens, M.D., a Sanford Health family physician who specializes in sports medicine, said: “Diabetes is huge. Anything we can do to intervene earlier is going to benefit patients in the long run. What’s exciting about this tool is it does, in a lot of cases, pick up patients who weren’t necessarily on your radar.”

The AI tool revealed to Dr. Boyens one patient who showed no signs of the disease.

“It now changes the conversation to what can we do to intervene in any of these risk factors to make a difference and head this off at the pass,” Dr. Boyens said.

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