World Coma Day 2023
World Coma Day 2023
Virtual Attendance || March 22, 2023
On March 22nd, 2023, the Neurocritical Care Society held a 24-hour webinar for World Coma Day. The event highlighted topics ranging from current clinical practices to future technological advances with AI and even to Stories of Hope. In particular, Colby Stevenson, an Olympian for the USA ski team, provided insights on his 2016 injury and hopeful outlook on the future. Despite his incident, Colby was able to return to skiing and win a World Cup just eight months after his injury. During his interview on World Coma Day, he shared his positive sentiment on neurointensive care when he mentioned that we as a human race are “blessed with the power to heal.” Watch his story called “NERVE” on YouTube here.
Some members of our team stumbled on small golden nuggets of information that stuck with us at World Coma Day 2023. One of these was presented by Asher Albertson from the University of Washington. He mentioned that often in the ICU the “dizzying amount of information can lead to inaction or incomplete action.” Information overload is a phenomenon that occurs when too much confusing information is presented to a user, causing a negative effect on decision making and interpretation.
Although there is a dogmatic shift from low resolution data acquisition to comprehensive multimodality monitoring, we as a community need to be conscious that the amount of information we choose to capture has the potential to confuse or confound decision making. Work is greatly needed that can extract only the most relevant information and features from all of this data into interpretable and actionable guidance for clinical staff. Other disciplines such as critical care have done this well, so we should take concepts from them. Afterall, as a human race, we are “blessed with the power to steal”… or at least to build upon the work of others.
P.S. Check out our post for World Coma Day 2024!
