Subscribe

Fujitsu's human-centric AI helps enable faster, improved clinical decision-making


London and Madrid, 21 Nov 2016

News facts:
* Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe's new HIKARI Advanced Clinical Research Information System enables a new level of clinical decision-making.
* Underpinned by Fujitsu's human-centric Artificial Intelligence 'Zinrai' technologies, it provides doctors with access to aggregated, anonymised and integrated data, gathered from both clinical and non-clinical data sources.
* Latest advances build on successful field trial with San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Spain, halving the time to pre-screen patient records and giving more time for patient consultations.
* Key benefits include faster, improved clinical decision-making, with high risk assessment accuracy.

Fujitsu has unveiled a new healthcare solution designed to improve clinical decision-making, following a successful field trial with San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid. The solution has been developed on the back of the company's in-depth research into applying advanced data analytics for healthcare applications. It has involved working in close collaboration with San Carlos Clinical Hospital's expert clinicians, applying Fujitsu's principles of co-creation to deliver tangible value in the field of mental healthcare. It deploys Fujitsu Laboratories' state of the art anonymisation technologies and Fujitsu's data analytics technologies, tailored to meet the specific needs of the local Spanish healthcare sector. The technology will form the basis of a new Health Application Programming Interface (API), to be deployed in the Fujitsu cloud or delivered locally in a private cluster or cloud.

This development represents an important step in the provision of advanced healthcare services, as Kunio Suzuki, Director of Innovation, at Fujitsu Spain explains: "Our collaboration with the clinicians at San Carlos Clinical Hospital highlighted the importance of finding new ways to support the clinical decision-making process. In the future, our Health API will give clinicians immediate access to aggregated and integrated data, gathered from both clinical and non-clinical data sources. This information was previously only available in paper format, from a multiplicity of sources in different formats. During the field trial, we demonstrated that our solution could more than halve the time needed for clinicians to pre-screen patient records, giving them significantly more time to spend with the patients themselves. It is a very exciting development, with the potential for many additional applications, including training new doctors in this highly specialist field."

The field trial took place over a six-month period, involving senior mental health clinicians from San Carlos Clinical Hospital and a core database of over 36 000 anonymised patient records. Fujitsu leveraged this database to develop its Advanced Clinical Research Information System, based on its advanced artificial intelligence expertise including data analytics and semantic modelling. In the field trial, each of the clinicians looked at issues associated with the main diagnosis, any co-morbidities, potential risks from suicide, substance or alcohol abuse, and the patient history of using the healthcare system. Fujitsu's system demonstrated a very high degree of risk assessment accuracy, with the system accelerating and systemising the verification of key clinical data and identification of existing clinical problems. It achieved results of over 85% to identify suicide, alcohol and drug abuse risk.

Dr Julio Mayol, Chief Medical and Innovation Officer of San Carlos Clinical Hospital, believes that Fujitsu's Health API has the potential to revolutionise the clinical decision-making process. "We gained real value from this project with Fujitsu, and are now in the process of scaling and rolling out the solution to provide access to more psychiatrists in the hospital. It is essential for clinicians to understand the potential health risks associated with a given patient, in order to be able to prescribe the appropriate treatment. This involves taking into account the patient's medical history as well as their current situation, requiring comprehensive health risk and diagnosis assessments. This critical activity is conducted daily by more than 250 000 clinicians across Spain. The ability to integrate information from different departments, for example from the emergency department, in-patient services and the mental health department, gives us an immediate total view. This is achieved in seconds compared to hours beforehand, leaving our hard-pressed doctors with much more time to treat patients."

Open innovation and co-creation represent essential elements in Fujitsu's objective of applying advanced data analytics to create a truly integrated healthcare solution, as Dr Tsuneo Nakata, CEO of Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe concludes: "Working collaboratively with San Carlos Clinical Hospital has allowed us to accelerate the innovation process and achieve important results, solving real-world problems much more quickly and efficiently. The field trial's success has been key to developing the new Health API, demonstrating how the R&D and innovation process can be transformed rapidly into a tangible business solution. We will continue to enhance the technology behind the Health API, showing how our advanced artificial intelligence expertise can be deployed in state of the art solutions that benefit society."

Figure: Fujitsu's clinical-decision making tool - typical scenario workflow at San Carlos Clinical Hospital.
Figure: Fujitsu's clinical-decision making tool - typical scenario workflow at San Carlos Clinical Hospital.

About the HIKARI Advanced Clinical Research Information System

Medical research produces a vast amount of data, across a combination of high throughput pre-clinical and clinical tools. If successfully unlocked, this information can provide clinicians with a wealth of information, as well as the ability to identify patterns and relationships. The result offers significant potential for the creation of a new generation of enhanced healthcare services.

In order to address this challenge, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe developed its Advanced Clinical Research Information System 'HIKARI', which stands for Health Informatics for Knowledge fusion in Advanced Research Innovations. The system is designed to bring together the insights of leading psychiatrists, semantic technologies and data analytics. Meaning 'light' in Japanese, HIKARI combines an advanced set of microservices that allow clinicians to extract knowledge and perform analyses across multiple data sources relevant for a patient's health.

HIKARI allows clinicians to explore patient data from a completely new perspective. It transforms the raw data, which is noisy and sits in isolated silos in different hospital departments, into clear and understandable knowledge that can be used for insightful clinical decision-making. It assists clinicians to conduct research in a more efficient way, improving the outcome of their studies and giving them significantly more time to focus on treating patients. HIKARI also delivers management benefits, helping the understanding of how different resources and policies contribute to patient health.

The HIKARI system is part of Fujitsu's digital solutions and services being developed under the human-centric AI initiative, Zinrai. This comprises a comprehensive framework of component technology, such as machine learning, deep learning and visual recognition.

Related News

9 June 2015: Fujitsu establishes strategic research collaboration framework agreement with the Foundation for Biomedical Research of San Carlos Clinical Hospital (FIBHCSC)

2 November 2015: Fujitsu Takes Systematic Approach to Artificial Intelligence with "Human Centric AI Zinrai"

Online resources
*
Read the Fujitsu blog: http://blog.ts.fujitsu.com
* Follow Fujitsu on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Fujitsu_Global
* Follow it on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/fujitsu
* Find Fujitsu on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FujitsuICT
* Fujitsu pictures and media server: http://mediaportal.ts.fujitsu.com/pages/portal.php
* For regular news updates, bookmark the Fujitsu newsroom: http://ts.fujitsu.com/ps2/nr/index.aspx

Share

Fujitsu

Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 156 000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. It uses its experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with its customers. Fujitsu (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.7 trillion yen (US$41 billion) for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2016.

For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com

Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe

Established in 2001 and with an active presence in Europe since 1990, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe represents Fujitsu Laboratories across EMEIA, focusing on regional initiatives that reflect the diverse mix of countries and ideologies. Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe is focused on the creation of cutting-edge solutions that benefit society, working with customers, collaboration partners and society as a whole to drive the evolution of information communication technologies. It works on the principle of open innovation, with particular emphasis on future networking, big data analytics, the Internet of things, social innovations, and supercomputer applications.

For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/fle/.