Doctors at Israel's Maccabi national health fund have recently begun working with an Artificial Intelligence-based predictive algorithm that advises doctors in the process of deciding on personalized antibiotic treatment for patients.
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The new algorithm was developed by the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology together with KSM (Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi), the Maccabi Research and Innovation Center.
Maccabi chose to focus its first diagnoses on urinary tract infection – the most common bacterial infection among women. Around 30% of females suffer from the infection at least once during their lifetime, and up to 10% experience recurrent infections. Until now, in most cases, general treatment has been administered based on clinical guidelines and medical judgment. Sometimes, the bacteria prove to be antibiotic-resistant, resulting in the need to change the treatment plan.
Since the new algorithm was introduced, Maccabi doctors have treated tens of thousands of cases, and there has been a drop of around 35% in the need to switch antibiotics following the development of bacterial resistance to the drug prescribed.
This is significant because accuracy in the choice of antibiotics is far greater thanks to the new technology. In light of the success of this new development in the treatment of UTI, Maccabi has begun working on the development of additional detection systems that will help to contend with other infectious diseases that require personalized treatment with antibiotics.
The automated system works by recommending the most suitable antibiotic treatment for the patient to the doctor, based on clinical guidelines and other criteria such as age, gender, pregnancy status, residence in an assisted living facility, and personal history of UTI and antibiotics administered.
The unique algorithm was developed by Prof. Roy Kishony and Dr. Idan Yelin of the Technion Faculty of Biology, in cooperation with KSM, headed by Dr. Tal Patalon, and was introduced and implemented among Maccabi's doctors by the health fund's Medical Informatics team and Chief Physician's Department.
"The algorithm we developed together with Maccabi's experts is a major milestone in personalized medicine on the way to AI-based antibiotic treatments, which are personally tailored to the patient according to the prediction of treatment response and mitigate the development of resistant bacteria," said Kishony.
Dr. Shira Greenfield, Director of Medical Informatics at Maccabi, said: "The significance of administering personalized antibiotic treatment is that it lowers the risk of antibiotic resistance developing – a global problem which all healthcare entities are working to solve."
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