A patient walks into the emergency department (ED) with a nagging migraine that won't let up. She knows that in the ED she'll be able to get a medication strong enough to provide relief. She answers the staff's questions as she waits for imaging to rule out a life-threatening cause.
What she does not know is that the hospital will run her clinical notes, imaging reports, and other available health data through an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained to calculate a risk score about the likelihood of whether she is experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Now, something that she has never disclosed to a healthcare provider, something that she held back out of fear of judgment, of not being believed or supported, and worry about what would happen to her children or what her partner might do if he found out, is being reflected in her electronic medical record (EMR).
This spring, the high-profile killings of women, like Cerina Fairfax, DDS, and Coral Springs, Florida, Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer, were a sobering reminder that IPV remains persistently common and widespread. Authorities say Fairfax was killed by her husband before he committed suicide; Metayer's husband has been formally charged with premeditated murder. While IPV affects people of all gender identities, it disproportionately impacts women, with nearly one in three U.S. women experiencing contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. Women with a history of IPV have higher healthcare utilization and costs, which continue long after the violence ends. As a result, healthcare settings are thought of as an optimal setting for screening women for IPV to connect them with needed survivor support services.
