Background: Weaning from mechanical ventilation represents a high-stakes, resource-intensive ICU procedure. Delayed or unsuccessful liberation prolongs patient stays, increases morbidity and mortality, and drives up health‐care costs. In Ireland, there is currently no national repository enabling granular benchmarking of ventilation practices or outcomes against international cohorts.
Aims and Research Question:
This project seeks to determine how ventilator weaning practices and patient characteristics influence key clinical outcomes in Irish ICUs. Specifically, we will ask: “Which factors predict weaning duration, success and mortality, and how do Irish practices compare to leading international datasets?”
Plan of Investigation:
1. Data Extraction & Harmonisation:
o Extract ventilator settings, sedation regimens, laboratory values, imaging reports and outcome measures from Galway University Hospital (2019–2024).
o Transform and load these data into an OMOP‐CDM environment to generate the IrelandICUdb.
2. Comparative Analytics:
o Apply WEANSAFE criteria to classify weaning episodes in IrelandICUdb.
o Contrast GUH practices and outcomes with WEANSAFE and AmsterdamUMCdb cohorts, using propensity-score matching to evaluate five-year temporal trends.
3. Machine Learning & Validation:
o Train predictive models (e.g. random forests, gradient boosting) on IrelandICUdb to classify weaning success and mortality.
o Validate model performance across multinational cohorts to assess generalisability.
4. Dashboard Development & Federated Governance:
o Co-design with healthcare experts, PPI representatives and software engineers a secure, interactive dashboard for benchmarking, audit-feedback and policy translation.
o Establish GDPR-compliant data-sharing agreements and joint-controllership frameworks to enable future federated analyses.
Policy and Practice Impact: Deliverables—including the IrelandICUdb, peer-reviewed analytics reports, machine-learning algorithms, and a live benchmarking dashboard—will directly inform ICU audit metrics, national weaning guidelines and digital health policy. By demonstrating the power of routinely collected EHR data, this work will catalyse sustainable quality improvement cycles and foster Ireland’s participation in pan-European critical-care research.