Can AI Say When It’s Time to Die?

Doctors can be slow to talk about the end of the traditional medical road. When they’ve been trying to manage a life-threatening illness or keep a terminal patient alive, bringing up palliative or hospice care can feel like giving up. But these options can radically improve quality of life, or the end of life, when traditional medicine hasn’t helped enough—if patients and their doctors figure it out in time. Some providers just don’t recognize when the end is near until it’s very near, says Mihir Kamdar, a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who heads clinical health at ...