Many Americans, almost half, have a problem called hypertension. This is another name for high blood pressure.
It’s serious. In 2021, about 700,000 people died because of it. It can also lead to other diseases like stroke and heart failure.
Though you can avoid it by eating healthy, moving more, and drinking less, treating it can be difficult.
Doctors have many drugs to pick from, but each one has its good and bad parts. But, there’s a new helper – an artificial intelligence program or AI.
The AI Helper
Scientists and doctors from Boston University created an AI program. It helps doctors give the right medicine to the right patients.
It uses a lot of information about the patients. This includes things like age, heart rate, past health problems, and results of medical tests.
The AI helps doctors lower patients’ systolic blood pressure. This is the blood pressure when the heart is beating. The researchers say the AI program can do this better than the usual treatment.
How the AI Works
Now, when doctors pick a medicine, they think about the patient’s history, treatment goals, and the effects of different medicines.
This can be tricky when there are many options. The AI program helps by making this easier. It gives doctors a list of medicines that would work best for the patient.
The scientists used data from over 40,000 patients to create the AI. The patients all had high blood pressure and were treated at Boston Medical Center from 2012 to 2020. The AI program uses this information to suggest the best treatment for new patients.
The researchers compared the AI with other methods. The AI helped lower systolic blood pressure more than the other methods.
It also suggested stopping some medicines for patients taking many drugs. This can be helpful when doctors are unsure which drug works better.
What Experts Say
Experts believe this AI program can improve patient care. It’s an important step that could help doctors treat patients better.
“Our goal is to make treatment more personal using machine learning algorithms,” says Ioannis Paschalidis, a professor at Boston University.
However, AI hasn’t been used much in healthcare yet. This is because it can be hard to understand how it works. Also, some people don’t trust AI. But, the team made sure that their AI is easy to understand.
“This model provides the chance to better care for different types of patients,” says Nicholas J. Cordella, a doctor at Boston Medical Center.
He thinks personalized medicine and models like this AI can serve patients better. Especially those who weren’t considered when medical guidelines were created.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies about how fasting may help reverse high blood pressure, and this olive oil could reduce blood pressure in healthy people.
For more information about blood pressure, please see recent studies about common drugs that may increase your blood pressure, and results showing this 5-minute exercise can reduce high blood pressure.
The study was published in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
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