Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Apr 13, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 15, 2018 - Jun 10, 2018
Date Accepted: Feb 17, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Computer Application to Predict Adverse Events in the Short-Term Evolution of Patients With Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Background:
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common chronic disease. Exacerbations of COPD (eCOPD) contribute to the worsening of the disease and the patient’s evolution. There are some clinical prediction rules that may help to stratify patients with eCOPD by their risk of poor evolution or adverse events. The translation of these clinical prediction rules into computer applications would allow their implementation in clinical practice.
Objective:
The goal of this study was to create a computer application to predict various outcomes related to adverse events of short-term evolution in eCOPD patients attending an emergency department (ED) based on valid and reliable clinical prediction rules.
Methods:
A computer application, Prediction of Evolution of patients with eCOPD (PrEveCOPD), was created to predict 2 outcomes related to adverse events: (1) mortality during hospital admission or within a week after an ED visit and (2) admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) or an intermediate respiratory care unit (IRCU) during the eCOPD episode. The algorithms included in the computer tool were based on clinical prediction rules previously developed and validated within the Investigación en Resultados y Servicios de Salud COPD study. The app was developed for Windows and Android systems, using Visual Studio 2008 and Eclipse, respectively.
Results:
The PrEveCOPD computer application implements the prediction models previously developed and validated for 2 relevant adverse events in the short-term evolution of patients with eCOPD. The application runs under Windows and Android systems and it can be used locally or remotely as a Web application. Full description of the clinical prediction rules as well as the original references is included on the screen. Input of the predictive variables is controlled for out-of-range and missing values. Language can be switched between English and Spanish. The application is available for downloading and installing on a computer, as a mobile app, or to be used remotely via internet.
Conclusions:
The PrEveCOPD app shows how clinical prediction rules can be summarized into simple and easy to use tools, which allow for the estimation of the risk of short-term mortality and ICU or IRCU admission for patients with eCOPD. The app can be used on any computer device, including mobile phones or tablets, and it can guide the clinicians to a valid stratification of patients attending the ED with eCOPD.
ClinicalTrial:
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00102401; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT02434536 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/76iwTxYuA)
International Registered Report:
RR2-10.1186/1472-6963-11-322
Citation

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.