Gaussian Processes for Personalized Interpretable Volatility Metrics in the Step-Down Ward

Patients in a hospital step-down unit require a level of care that is between that of the intensive care unit (ICU) and that of the general ward. While many patients remain physiologically stabilized, others will suffer clinical emergencies and be readmitted to the ICU, with a subsequent high risk of mortality. Had the associated physiological deterioration been detected early, the emergency may have been less severe or avoided entirely. Current clinical monitoring is largely heuristic, requiring manual calculation of risk scores and the use of heuristic decision criteria. Technical drawbacks include ignoring the time-series dynamics of physiological measurements, and lacking patient-specificity (i.e., personalization of models to the individual patient). In this paper, we demonstrate how Gaussian process regression models can supplement current monitoring practice by providing interpretable and intuitive illustrations of erratic vital-sign volatility. These personalized volatility metrics may provide significantly advanced warning of deterioration, while minimizing the false alarms that induce so-called alarm fatigue. While many AI-based approaches to healthcare are criticized for being uninterpretable "black-box" methods, the cause of alarms generated from the proposed methods are explicitly interpretable and intuitive. We conclude that intelligent computational inference using methods such as those proposed can enhance current clinical decision making and potentially save lives.