AI tool uses emergency room narratives to predict PTSD risk

About 43 million patients are admitted to a US emergency department (ED) each year with physical injuries (trauma), and more than a quarter of them develop PTSD, according to past studies. That makes the ED a checkpoint for catching the condition early, but clinicians face time constraints severe enough to rule out the use of standard screening questionnaires.

"The emergency department is often the only point of contact a trauma survivor has with the healthcare system before symptoms become much harder to treat," added Dr. Schultebraucks, who is also co-director of computational psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. "By identifying at-risk patients at that first encounter, PREVIA could open a window for timely care approaches, when preventive intervention is most effective."

The study was funded by the National Institute for Mental Health grant R01 MH129856 (PI Dr. Katharina Schultebraucks).

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NYU Langone Health

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