Using Artificial Intelligence in infection prevention

Dr Richard Drew, RCSI and Rotunda Hospital, Ireland

Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of our everyday lives. While it provides an exciting opportunity to improve the management of IPC in our hospitals, it also has a lot of potential pitfalls. Patients increasingly are becoming accustomed to using AI in their private lives, and so expect that our healthcare services are also using these latest techniques. IPC teams are challenged to introduce AI in to their practice, while being aware of financial and human resource constraints.

In this talk several examples will be given of major international papers on AI tools, but also local small quality improvement projects that we have done using AI methods. The key areas of machine learning such as unsupervised clustering and catergorisation using supervised methods will be reviewed. Examples will mainly focus on the areas of paediatrics and obstetrics, and where AI can have a direct patient impact. Finally the talk will address the issue of deep learning, discussing the potential pitfalls of such systems and the need for ethical frameworks to be embedded in our health service to ensure patient welfare and safety is protected.