Corewell Health and Michigan State University researchers are the first in the state to use de-identified electronic health records of more than 1.5 million patients to analyze incidence rates and risk factors of mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, in rural and urban areas in West Michigan. Results showed that many cases could be going undetected among those living in in the area, and researchers will now use the findings to develop AI tools that can detect MCI earlier among patients across the country.
The , which included 10 years of historical patient data, is now in the journal and is the first large-scale analysis representing most of the population of West Michigan, with some of its findings surprising study authors. "While we had our suspicions about what we would find; we did not expect the potential rate of underdiagnosis of MCI in some of the rural areas in West Michigan to be so high," said Bin Chen, Ph.D.
, associate professor in the MSU College of Human Medicine and co-principal investigator of the study. According to Chen, typically, individuals experience MCI before developing dementia. Yet, the study found that patients who progressed directly to dementia without a prior MCI diagnosis, also referred to in the study as MCI skippers, were three times more prevalent than those identified with MCI initially.
"This tells us MCI may be going unreported with some patients," Chen said. David Chesla, co-principal investigator and senior director of research data manageme.