What was announced
Arkstone said on Nov. 4 that it had launched Arkstone Next, an expert-in-the-loop AI platform that provides infectious disease guidance to clinicians at the point of care. The company said it is aimed at sites where such expertise is hardest to find: rural health clinics, urgent care centres, and skilled nursing and long-term care facilities.
The numbers behind it
The company cited the CDC's new Antimicrobial Resistance Threats Report, which it said finds the germs tracked cause 9.7 million infections and 50,800 deaths in the U.S. each year. It also cited CDC estimates that at least 28% of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary, that nearly half of antibiotics prescribed in urgent care for common respiratory illnesses are not needed, and that up to 70% of nursing home residents receive an antibiotic each year, with as many as 75% of those prescriptions unnecessary or inappropriate. Treating six common resistant infections costs the U.S. more than $4.6 billion a year, the company said.
How the platform is built
Arkstone Next builds on OneChoice, the company's clinical decision support technology, which it said has guided treatment for two million cases over nearly a decade. The company said its models are trained, validated and governed by infectious disease experts, and that each recommendation carries citable clinical guidance. Organisations can involve their own specialists in shaping the guidance clinicians receive, it said.
The platform includes ARKIE, an AI assistant trained and validated by Arkstone's clinical experts to help clinicians work through infectious disease questions and interpret diagnostic results; the OneChoice Portal, which brings guidance and reports into daily workflow; and Precision ASP, which helps facilities run an antimicrobial stewardship programme and meet CDC and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requirements. Guidance is available in the electronic health record, on the web and on smartphones, the company said.
What the company says it is for
Ari Frenkel, co-founder and chief science officer, said the challenge clinicians face is not a lack of information but turning information from many sources into the right decision quickly, and that the platform puts infectious disease expertise in the hands of every clinician. Jamal Samaha, chief growth officer at Local MD, which operates ten urgent care clinics in Illinois and Indiana, said in the release that the platform had helped its clinicians determine treatment quickly and improve outcomes while minimising treatment and readmission costs.
