http://www.physionet.org/challenge/2012/

The development of methods for prediction of mortality rates in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) populations has been motivated primarily by the need to compare the efficacy of medications, care guidelines, surgery, and other interventions when, as is common, it is necessary to control for differences in severity of illness or trauma, age, and other factors. For example, comparing overall mortality rates between trauma units in a community hospital, a teaching hospital, and a military field hospital is likely to reflect the differences in the patient populations more than any differences in standards of care. Acuity scores such as APACHE and SAPS-II are widely used to account for these differences in the context of such studies. By contrast, the focus of the PhysioNet/CinC Challenge 2012 is to develop methods for patient-specific prediction of in-hospital mortality. Participants will use information collected during the first two days of an ICU stay to predict which patients survive their hospitalizations, and which patients do not.