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In hospital intensive care items, neurologists typically use a easy scorecard to rapidly consider a critically in poor health affected person’s probability of getting a brain-damaging seizure to allow them to forestall it. The scorecard saves lives, lowers prices and helps medical doctors make much more environment friendly use of necessary, costly medical tools.
But it surely wasn’t all the time that manner. Till about 2019, hospitals had no solution to rapidly monitor a affected person’s digital mind exercise and precisely predict whether or not a seizure was lurking. Usually, a affected person wanted steady monitoring for twenty-four to 48 hours on a steady EEG (cEEG) machine to know for positive.
These machines are so costly that almost all hospitals solely have a number of, which suggests solely a handful of sufferers at a time may gain advantage from them. Usually, the monitor could be used on a affected person at low-seizure threat whereas extra high-risk sufferers must wait.
In 2016, a group at MIT led by present Duke pc scientist Cynthia Rudin with then Ph.D pupil Berk Ustun and neurologist colleagues Aaron Struck and Brandon Westover started work on a brand new device for medical doctors to make use of. The group crunched knowledge from hundreds of sufferers utilizing synthetic intelligence to create a greater solution to rapidly consider mind damage sufferers.
The ensuing scorecard—known as “2HELPS2B,” assigns factors to sufferers primarily based on the patterns discovered of their cEEG knowledge. It rapidly estimates a chance {that a} affected person would have a seizure in a variety from 5 to 95%.
“There was no model to do this before,” mentioned Rudin. She is a Duke professor of engineering and pc science who beforehand labored at MIT; it was throughout her time at MIT that she started work on this mission.
Rudin’s group used a machine studying algorithm that evaluated about 70 various factors derived from knowledge from greater than 5,000 sufferers, an advanced course of that took a number of years to excellent.
Now, a mind monitoring course of that after took as much as two days is completed as quick as 60 minutes, mentioned Westover, the Harvard neurologist.
The cEEG monitor derives knowledge on a affected person’s mind exercise {that a} specialist evaluates utilizing the scorecard. The scorecard assigns factors to elements equivalent to whether or not a sure electrical sample is current, or whether or not the affected person has had a previous seizure. A rating of zero means a affected person could be very unlikely to have a seizure; a rating of two suggests a probability of a seizure is 27%; a rating of 6 or extra is the utmost—which helps medical doctors allocate assets successfully.
“It’s a very, very useful tool,” Westover mentioned. “In critical care, the person who needs brain monitoring is usually confused or comatose, so you have no idea whether they’re having seizures now. Seizures can damage the brain, and if they have a brain injury already, a seizure will make it worse.”
A March 2025 research by UNC Chapel Hill researchers discovered that it has produced important advantages. Their research, printed within the journal Neurology Medical Follow, discovered that the scorecard may help hospitals rapidly decide which sufferers had been low threat and transfer their assets to different, extra vital ones. Doing so made extra environment friendly use of the screens with out compromising the flexibility to precisely predict seizures, the research concluded.
One of many scorecard’s finest options is its simplicity; it does not require any difficult arithmetic, only a fast tally of small numbers, solely 1s and 2s. That is one cause it is now broadly used, Westover mentioned.
“It’s ubiquitous now,” he mentioned. “My estimate would be that at least 90% of hospitals, if they have any ICU EEG services at all, will use this scorecard.”
It’s significantly satisfying to Rudin that the device, publicly funded by taxpayers via the federal authorities, is out there on the Web for anybody to make use of.
“You can’t do this if you work at a private company,” Rudin mentioned. “The only way I can make my models and algorithms public is because I am funded in a way that lets me do something for the public good. My goal is to make tools that everyone can use.”
Extra info:
Fazila Aseem et al, Implementation of 2HELPS2B Seizure Threat Rating, Neurology Medical Follow (2025). DOI: 10.1212/CPJ.0000000000200464
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A brand new device may help predict brain-damaging seizures and liberate steady EEG machines for high-risk sufferers (2025, Could 19)
retrieved 19 Could 2025
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