The use of Business Intelligence for the early detection of patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Josep Vilaseca, Eva Martinez, Josep Maria Galceran

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; chronic renal insufficiency; albuminuria; glomerular filtration rate

Background:

Chronic kindey disease (CKD) is the condition with the highest increase in prevalence over the last decades (estimated up to 15%). However, underdiagnosis is still a challenge (estimated between 60% and 90%). The main benefits of early detection and appropriate management are to reduce the progression of CKD to later stages requiring dialysis, an improved quality of life of the patients, and a decrease in the health expenditure related to hospitalization and substitute treatment. The early stages of CKD should be managed in primary health care (PHC), being the family doctors responsible for the use of the new treatments recommended in the most recent guidelines.
Business Intelligence (BI) can use the repository content of Electronic Health Records (HER) to improving the quality of healthcare delivery.

Research questions:

¿Can the use of BI improve the detection of patients with early (asymptomatic) stages of CKD?

Method:

Our two practices hold the primary care EHR of roughly 38.000 patients. We will create an automated algorithm to identify all patients with either glomerular filtration rate under 60 ml / minute or albuminuria over 30 mg / g (or both) in two measurements separated at least 3 months. Those patients will automatically be diagnosed as CKD patients.
The list of patients with new diagnoses of CKD will be sent to the respective family doctors, who will undertake the actions needed in order to appropriately classify and treat those patients according to their stage of CKD. The family doctors will also label the new diagnosis in the computerized clinical records in order to identify those patients in future consultations.

Results:

This project is still ongoing. We predict an increase of at least 5% in the new diagnoses of CKD.

Conclusions:

The use of BI may improve the early detection and treatment of CKD

Points for discussion:

We expect to have some preliminary results by the Prague conference

Is Business Intelligence widely used in Europe to support Primary Health Care?

Is Business Intelligence useful for the early detection of asymptomatic Chronic Kidney Disease?

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