How AI Developed for Video Games Can Treat Sepsis Posted on : Feb 13 - 2019

Researchers have used deep learning approaches commonly seen in video games to try and discover new therapeutic drug strategies for sepsis.

I've written numerous times about the dangers posed by sepsis and the various technological solutions to the condition. One of the more interesting approaches has been taken by researchers at the University of Vermont, who have used the kind of deep learning approaches commonly seen in video games to try and discover new therapeutic drug strategies for sepsis.

The researchers have developed a system that treats the immune system simulation as a kind of video game, with outputs from the simulation forming the score that allows the neural network to manipulate 12 cytokine mediators to stimulate a response from the immune system and bring the infection down to normal levels again.

"It's a complex system," the researchers explain. "Previous investigations have thus far been based on manipulating a single mediator/cytokine, generally administered with either a single dose or over a very short course. We believe our approach has great potential because it explores much more complex, out-of-the-box therapeutic strategies that treat each patient differently based on the patient's measurements over time."

This allows the system to propose treatment strategies that are both personalized and adaptive as it evolves according to each individual patient. Each run of the simulation presents the system with a different patient type, who presents with different initial conditions.

A Smarter Approach

By using this deep reinforcement learning approach, the researchers were able to identify a new treatment for patients that achieved a 100 percent survival rate (for patients the system had been trained on at least), with a lower than 1 percent mortality rate for 500 patients selected at random. View More