Milan Critical Care Datathon and ESICM's Big Datatalk 2020

The diffusion of electronic health records and advancement of monitoring devices has made possible the collection of always increasing amounts of patients’ data, especially in critical care. The opportunities arising from this form of Big Data are numerous and diverse, and are promoting a surge in research fundings and industry interests. Indeed, their analysis with machine learning and predictive modelling could provide new insights and improve patient care.

A Critical Care Datathon is a 24-hour challenge where clinicians, data scientists and statisticians work in teams with the goal of finding new ways to answer actual clinical questions using large datasets of electronic health records. It is a full-immersion experience where resourceful professionals put themselves to the test and cooperate with specialists of different fields, learn more about the potential of medical data and maybe make a breakthrough in critical care research!

The Big Datatalk consists in a series of traditional conference talks mixed with interactive sessions in which the audience will be guided through real-time simulations of patient database queries and development of predictive models. Acclaimed researchers will explain the potential of Machine Learning for Intensive Care Medicine, present the results obtained so far with this type of research and discuss issues of sensible data security, privacy, and quality.

Last year’s event commenced on the backburner but quickly sold out. The interest in the field is considerable, and it is growing by the day! The topics to be discussed are innumerous: last year we were only able to cover some and we promised ourselves that we would be following up with another edition to do more. Indeed, there are many passionate researchers investing their time applying AI to Intensive Care Medicine and developing new prediction models, we want to hear them out!