Every year, millions of people in the United States develop PTSD from a traumatic event—like a car crash, an assault or freak accident. A lot of those people end up in the ER answering the same question: “What brought you to the emergency department today?” Now, a research team in New York has an AI model that can use patients’ answers and demographics to spit out one number that tells medical staff how likely a patient is to develop PTSD a month later.
The work – published in the journal Nature Communications – could help an often-overloaded emergency department team prevent mental health disorders before they start.
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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Patrick Jarenwattananon. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Annlie Huang.
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