Clinical Intelligence Research Press Clinical Intelligence Research Press

Search

Search results:
Reinforcement Learning for Intravenous Fluid Resuscitation in Septic Shock: A Position Paper on Safety Constraints, Reward Design, and Clinical Oversight
Septic shock, defined as sepsis with persistent hypotension despite adequate fluid resuscitation and requiring vasopressors, has a mortality rate of 30–50% despite modern treatment. Intravenous fluids remain the cornerstone of early therapy, with guidelines recommending at least 30 mL/kg of crystalloids within the first three hours. However, both insufficient and excessive fluid administration can be harmful, making individualized, data-driven management essential. Reinforcement learning (RL) has been proposed to optimize fluid and vasopressor dosing in sepsis using retrospective ICU data. While models such as the AI Clinician suggest potential survival benefits, they often prioritize long-term outcomes like mortality and overlook short-term harms such as fluid overload and organ injury, raising safety concerns. Safety constraints and harm-aware reward design are essential in RL systems for septic shock. Pure outcome optimization is insufficient, and clinical AI must include mechanisms to prevent unsafe actions and ensure adherence to safety limits. Offline RL is vulnerable to distributional shift and unsafe extrapolation. Reward functions focused only on survival ignore acute complications, leading to unsafe policies. Human-in-the-loop oversight is necessary to maintain clinical accountability and enable intervention. RL systems should include action constraints, conservative learning with uncertainty estimation, and reward penalties for fluid overload indicators. Regulatory bodies and journals should require safety validation, and clinicians must retain override authority and transparency in decision-making. RL in septic shock management must prioritize patient safety through constraints, harm-aware rewards, and clinical oversight. Without these safeguards, deployment risks patient harm and loss of trust in clinical AI.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare Systems
Original Research | Open access | 20 January 2022 | Article: 59
Filters
Clear All

Subject
AI-driven Diagnostics Artificial Intelligence in Health Informatics Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Big Data in Healthcare Clinical Data Mining Clinical Decision Support Systems Clinical Informatics Computer Vision Connected Health Systems Deep Learning Digital Health Digital Healthcare Innovation Digital Transformation in Healthcare Electronic Health Records Ethical AI in Healthcare Explainable AI Health Data Analytics Health Data Privacy Health Informatics Health Information Management Health Information Systems Health System Optimization Health Technology Assessment Healthcare Data Science Healthcare Informatics Healthcare Information Security Healthcare Management Healthcare Management Information Systems Intelligent Medical Systems Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) Interoperability in Healthcare Systems Machine Learning Medical Data Analytics Medical Data Management Medical Imaging Mobile Health (mHealth) Natural Language Processing Precision Medicine Predictive Analytics Remote Patient Monitoring Smart Healthcare Systems Telemedicine Wearable Health Technologies e-Health




Access type Clear