The skåne emergency medicine (SEM) cohort

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Health Informatics
• Clinical Decision Support Systems

Background:

• Emergency departments (EDs) in the European Union face increasing patient volumes, with over 100 million visits annually, rising 2-3% year-on-year.
• Improved patient management strategies can significantly alleviate ED crowding, reduce diagnostic test utilization, decrease inpatient bed occupancy, and lower overall healthcare expenditures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish the Skåne Emergency Medicine (SEM) cohort, a comprehensive dataset for developing and validating clinical decision support systems (CDSS).
• To leverage artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and traditional statistical methods for advancing CDSS research.

Main Methods:

• The SEM cohort comprises 325,539 unique patients and 630,275 ED visits from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2018, across eight EDs in Skåne, Sweden.
• Data collected includes patient sociodemographics, medical history, current medications, chief complaints, diagnostic test results, disposition, and outcomes such as diagnoses, treatments, costs, and mortality up to 3 years post-visit.

Main Results:

• The SEM cohort provides a rich, real-world dataset for CDSS research.
• The dataset enables comprehensive analysis of patient journeys, diagnostic pathways, and treatment outcomes.

Conclusions:

• The SEM cohort serves as a valuable platform for collaborative research in clinical decision support systems.
• Its extensive real-world data and near-complete short-term follow-up facilitate research in epidemiology, patient management, diagnostics, prognostics, ED crowding, resource allocation, and social medicine.