E-Mail NEW YORK, NY-- Diagnosing chronic kidney disease, which is often undetected until it causes irreversible damage, may soon become automated with a new algorithm that interprets data from electronic medical records. The algorithm, developed by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, automatically scours a patient's electronic medical record for results of blood and urine tests and, using a mix of established equations and machine learning to process the data, can alert physicians to patients in the earliest stages of chronic kidney disease. A study of the algorithm was published in the journal npj Digital Medicine in April.