IIM-A research to predict cardiac patients' ICU stay

AHMEDABAD: A model developed under the leadership of a faculty of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) promises to serve cardiac patients waiting for surgery while helping manage Intensive Care Units (ICUs) of hospitals in a more efficient way.
Often patients in the ICU take a longer time to recover than what the doctors expect or the other way round.This leads to push and pull of the scheduled time or dates of operation of the rest of the patients in the waiting list, creating trouble and anxiety for them and their relatives.
Led by IIM-A faculty Goutam Dutta, a team of researchers including city-based cardiologist Dr Ajay Naik, KK Shastri Government Commerce College faculty Dipa Gosai and IIM-A research assistant Priyanko Ghosh has developed a model to predict the duration of stay in the ICU that a patient would need to go through after a cardiac surgery.
With upto 95 per cent accuracy, the model will reduce uncertain schedules for cardiac surgeries. “The model will help to optimise the use of ICUs which are critical resources in a developing country like ours. A prior idea of the duration of the stay at the ICU will also help ease the anxiety of the patients and their relatives. The prediction will also help them prepare their finance accordingly,” Dutta explained.
For deriving the predictions, one has to feed around six to eight specified parameters relating to the patient to the model. The model will automatically yield a score which will predict the duration of the patient’s stay required at the ICU.
It took the researchers more than a year to develop the model based on a data collected from 1,289 patients. Referring to the absence of such a model in the country till now, Dutta said, “Our research is the first attempt in the country and this is the first model of its kind.”
Added Naik: “There already exist such models for prediction in the west. However, these cannot be adopted in our country as the kind of common diseases, the average age of the patients, general habit and so on that are found there are different from our country.”