delirium research – Go Retire Psychiatrist

I got the Winter 2025 Hopkins Brain Wise newsletter today and there was a fascinating article, “Using AI to Reduce Delirium in the ICU: Pilot Study will explore AI headset can help reduce delirium and delay post-delirium cognitive decline.”

The article has exciting news about what researchers are doing which will, hopefully, reduce the incidence of delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU). Another Hopkins researcher has published a study that has already used AI algorithms to detect early warning signs of delirium in the ICU;

Gong, Kirby D. M.S.E.1; Lu, Ryan B.S., M.D., Ph.D.2; Bergamaschi, Teya S. M.S.E., Ph.D.3; Sanyal, Akaash M.S.E.4; Guo, Joanna B.S.5; Kim, Han B. M.S.E.6; Nguyen, Hieu T. B.S., Ph.D.7; Greenstein, Joseph L. Ph.D.8; Winslow, Raimond L. Ph.D.9; Stevens, Robert D. M.D.10. Predicting Intensive Care Delirium with Machine Learning: Model Development and External Validation. Anesthesiology 138(3):p 299-311, March 2023. | DOI: 10.1097/ALN.0000000000004478

The list of references for the study of course include those by Dr. E. Wesley Ely, who delivered an internal medicine grand rounds about delirium at the University of Iowa in 2019.

Anybody who reads my blog knows I’ve been knocking AI for a while now. However, anybody who also knows that I’m a retired consultation-liaison psychiatrist knows how interested I am in preventing delirium in the hospital. I worked as a clinical track professor for many years at The University of Iowa Health Care in Iowa City.

It’s fortuitous that I found out about what Johns Hopkins research is doing on this topic because the director of the Johns Hopkins psychiatry department happens to be Dr. Jimmy Potash MD, MPH, who’s identified on the newsletter. He was the head of the psychiatry department at the University of Iowa from 2011-2017.

Besides all the name-dropping I’m doing here, I’m also admitting that I’ll probably soften my position against AI if the research described here does what the investigators and I hope for, which is to reduce delirium in the ICU.

I just want to give an enthusiastic shout out to the European Delirium Association (EDA). I rediscovered the website. It’s updated and an extremely helpful organization in the study of delirium. It provides excellent education about the disorder.

I met one of the past presidents of the EDA, Alasdair MacLullich back in the early 2010s. In fact, while I was staffing the University of Iowa Hospital consultation-liaison service, he was generous enough to send us one of the pieces of technology which was designed to test for delirium: The Edinburgh Delirium Test Box or Delbox.

I wrote a blog post years ago about the EDA. At that time, the group published a newsletter called the Annals of Delirium. Here’s an excerpt from one of the issues in 2010:

Delirium has a long way to go before it gets the attention it deserves, before it is present in the public consciousness in the way cancer is, or even HIV. Bearing in mind the prevalence of delirium and the impact it has on patients and families we may believe it is only a matter of time, but I believe that the process is going far too slowly. Some countries are doing better than others and some areas of medicine are making greater inroads, which can only benefit us all in the long run. In the UK, however, if you search for delirium on the BBC website you are directed to the music page and the group Delirium Tremens.

I remember thinking that the anecdote reminded me of how that sounded a lot like the way things were going in the United States at that time.

And the EDA announcement about the new delirium organization in the U.S. that was just getting it’s start around that time, in 2011—the American Delirium Society (ADS).

There are educational videos about delirium on the EDA website and I’m excited to learn more about them.

Further, there was a sort of word search game I rediscovered that was made by the EDA. Some of the words are on the diagonal. Give it a shot! I finished it, but it was very challenging. If you need the key, please comment.