Early warning scores with and without artificial intelligence (15 October 2024)

Summary

This cohort study examined how hospital six early warning scores compare with one another, based on 362,926 patient encounters.

The authors compared three proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) early warning scores:

• Simultaneous Epic Deterioration Index (EDI)
• Rothman Index (RI)
• eCARTv5 (eCART)

against three publicly available simple aggregated weighted scores:

• Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS)
• National Early Warning Score (NEWS)
• NEWS2 scores.

In the study, eCART outperformed the other AI and non-AI scores, identifying more deteriorating patients with fewer false alarms and sufficient time to intervene. NEWS, a non-AI, publicly available early warning score, significantly outperformed EDI. The authors concluded that, given the wide variation in accuracy, additional transparency and oversight of early warning tools may be warranted.