Doctors examine patients at a medical centre of the Greek delegation of the Doctors of the World in Athens May 31, 2012. Greece's rundown state hospitals are cutting off vital drugs, limiting non-urgent operations and rationing even basic medical material
IN PHOTO: Doctors examine patients at a medical centre of the Greek delegation of the Doctors of the World in Athens May 31, 2012. Greece's rundown state hospitals are cutting off vital drugs, limiting non-urgent operations and rationing even basic medical materials for exhausted doctors as a combination of economic crisis and political stalemate strangle health funding. With Greece now in its fifth year of deep recession, trapped under Europe's biggest public debt burden and dependent on international help to keep paying its bills, the effects are starting to bite deeply into vital services. Picture taken May 31, 2012. Reuters/Stringer

Even though death is inevitable, people are always curious to know when they are going to die. So far, there has been no machinery to communicate that information. However, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston has recently installed a supercomputer than can predict the estimated time of death of a patient.

According to the staff at the hospital, the wonder machine can make the predictions with more than 96 percent accuracy. The machine holds the data for at least 250,000 patients admitted at the facility during the last 30 years.

In addition, the supercomputer is connected to every patient currently admitted at the hospital. According to the Science World Report, the longer the machine is connected to the patients, the more data it collects and becomes accurate at predicting illnesses.

"So if the computer says you're going to die you probably will die in the next 30 days," said Dr. Steve Horng, in an interview with the BBC.

The doctors at the hospital in Boston say that the machine is capable of identifying the rarest of the rare diseases that can sometimes even be missed by the doctors themselves. It can record, analyse and interpret data at a super speed.

The machine notes the vital statistics of the patients, including the oxygen levels and blood pressure, every three minutes. Therefore, it is able to diagnose the patients at a faster pace than the doctors at the facility.

"So, for example, this computer thinks that this patient has a 99% chance of having some sort of chest pain and they only have 26% of having heart failure," explained Horng.

However, Horng further cleared that the machine has been placed to help the doctors and not to replace them. Patients might not accept a computer dictating their course of treatment.

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