
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help improve how premature babies are fed, giving them a better chance at normal growth and development, a new study says. Currently, preemies in a neonatal intensive care unit are fed by IV, receiving a drip-drop handmade blend of nutrients that doctors call total parenteral nutrition, or TPN. This is the only way to feed newborns whose digestive systems haven’t matured enough to properly absorb nutrients, researchers said. “Right now, we come up with a TPN prescription for each baby, individually, every day,” senior researcher Nima Aghaeepour, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, said in a news release. “We make it from scratch and provide it to them.” Unfortunately, the process is error-prone, and it’s tough for docs to know if they’ve gotten the formula right, researchers said. There’s no blood test to measure whether a preemie has received enough daily calories, and preemies don’t necessarily cry when they’re hungry or become calm and content when they’re full. “Total parenteral nutrition is the single largest source of medical error in neonatal intensive care units, both in the United States and globally,” Aghaeepour said. To try to solve this problem, researchers trained an AI program on nearly 80,000 past prescriptions for preemie IV nutrition, linked to data on how the tiny patients fared. The AI uses information in a preemie’s… read on > read on >