For 10 years, the technology development team at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Clinical Decision Technology Laboratory, based in the Department of Emergency Medicine, has worked to create APPRAISE, a software system providing automated decision support for doctors and nurses as they manage patients after possibly life-threatening traumatic injury.

When trauma patients first arrive at the emergency department, there is a trauma team of physicians, trauma surgeons, and nurses who evaluate the patient and rapidly provide any necessary clinical interventions.

For the sickest trauma patients, this care can be very complex and needs to occur in a very quick time span. Many studies have examined how well emergency trauma care is delivered at different hospitals throughout the United States. The studies have shown that trauma teams frequently make small or even large mistakes while they work to quickly perform complex trauma care.

The APPRAISE software system was developed to make it easier for the trauma team to keep track of the current state of the patient and appropriate clinical interventions.
This is particularly important because the condition of a trauma patient, and the best plan of management, may evolve rapidly through time.

The MGH CDTL is run by Andrew Reisner, MD, an MGH physician and associate professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Many experts in healthcare believe that automated computer systems and AI can reduce mistakes and make it easier for clinicians to do the right thing,” says Reisner.

“However, there is no widely accepted software system to guide emergency department care of trauma patients with life-threatening injuries. We think APPRAISE might establish a new generation of computer technology that helps patients get the very best care even when they are very unstable.”

The team recently received FDA approval to conduct the APPRAISE 2.0 trial to evaluate if clinicians perceive that APPRAISE is useful in managing severely injured patients.

Because APPRAISE is intended for use in the treatment of severely injured patients, the study team has received permission from the FDA to conduct the trial with Exception From Informed Consent (EFIC).

This means APPRAISE can be used to help manage qualifying trauma patients without informed consent unless they have previously opted out of the study.

Over the next few months, Reisner and his colleagues are reaching out to the Boston community to ask for feedback and to share information about the APPRAISE clinical trial. “We developed this technology with people’s health in mind, and now that we believe we are ready to test APPRAISE, we want to make sure this is what the people of Boston want,” says Reisner.

The research team invites you to share your opinions on the upcoming APPRAISEclinical trial that will involve EFIC. Please complete this brief survey to help the research team understand how the Boston community feels about EFIC and the APPRAISE trial.

If you would like to learn more about APPRAISE and you are willing to provide your feedback, please visit the study website.

Click here to learn about APPRAISE

People who want to opt out of the APPRAISE clinical trial can request a special ‘opt-out’ bracelet. For more information on how to opt-out click the link below.

How to opt out of the APPRAISE Trial

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