Bridging data gaps of rare conditions in ICU: a multi-disease adaptation approach for clinical prediction

Journal article

Artificial Intelligence has revolutionised critical care for common conditions. Yet, rare conditions in the intensive care unit (ICU), including recognised rare diseases and low-prevalence conditions in the ICU, remain underserved due to data scarcity and intra-condition heterogeneity. To bridge such gaps, we developed KnowRare, a domain adaptation-based deep learning framework for predicting clinical outcomes for rare conditions in the ICU. KnowRare mitigates data scarcity by initially learning condition-agnostic representations from diverse electronic health records through self-supervised pre-training. It addresses intra-condition heterogeneity by selectively adapting knowledge from clinically similar conditions with a developed condition knowledge graph. Evaluated on two ICU datasets across five clinical prediction tasks (90-day mortality, 30-day readmission, ICU mortality, remaining length of stay, and phenotyping), KnowRare consistently outperformed existing state-of-the-art models. Additionally, KnowRare demonstrated superior predictive performance compared to established ICU scoring systems, including APACHE IV and IV-a. Case studies further demonstrated KnowRare’s flexibility in adapting its parameters to accommodate dataset-specific and task-specific characteristics, its generalisation to common conditions under limited data scenarios, and its rationality in selecting source conditions. These findings highlight KnowRare’s potential as a robust and practical solution for supporting clinical decision-making and improving care for rare conditions in the ICU.

Authors: Zhu, M; Liu, Y; Luo, Z; Zhu, T

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: npj Digital Medicine
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 1
• Article number: 7
• Publication date: 2026-01-03
• Acceptance date: 2025-11-13
• DOI: 10.1038/s41746-025-02176-y
• EISSN: 2398-6352
• ISSN: 2398-6352
• Language: English
• Keywords: Bridging (networking); Scarcity; Flexibility (engineering); Intensive care unit; Adaptation (eye); Intensive care; Multidisciplinary approach; Bridge (graph theory)