When extreme heat hits the Boston area, emergency departments are packed with people who are dehydrated, experiencing kidney or heart problems, or are having heat cramps.
Now a health care system that serves 2.5 million patients across Massachusetts is turning to artificial intelligence for help.
“The stress of the heat exacerbates those conditions, and we’ll see a 10 percent jump of people in the emergency department not just for heat illness, but also weakness or syncope or other conditions due to the heat,” said Paul Biddinger, chief preparedness and continuity officer at Mass General Brigham, the nonprofit academic health system that is working on a new alert system to warn people about the dangers of heat waves.
In February, MGB was one of five applicants to join a Sustainability Accelerator run by IBM. The program seeks to help communities facing environmental and economic stress through technology. It had received more than 100 proposals for how to use AI to advance climate sustainability and resilience.
