Using ultra-scale machine learning to find new biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. Uncovering bias in artificial intelligence (AI) models used in medical diagnosis. Identifying patients with potentially life-threatening antibiotic-resistant infections. Predicting the spread of disease with advanced computing. These are just a few of the advances in medical care in the works right now at the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC). The center uses AI, machine learning, and state-of-the-art data analytics to benefit public health in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.
All of this innovation energy is only possible because of UM-IHC’s unique recipe: the advanced computing expertise of the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP); the clinical and biomedical research experts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB); and a vast database of health information provided by the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS). The goal is to use the blend of those three critical ingredients to improve well-being and quality of life, fight disease, and enhance outcomes for all people across Maryland and beyond.
Data Engineer Chaitrali Kher explains how data modeling is used to forecast and track opioid overdose trends.
Scientists at the center took the occasion of UM-IHC’s second anniversary Nov. 25 to showcase their latest work and introduce a wide array of new collaborations with government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and prominent members of the region’s burgeoning biotech industry.
“We are truly poised to take advantage of these breakthroughs because of our location, our partnerships with biotech companies right here in Montgomery County, and of course, wonderful agencies such as NIH, FDA and NIST,” declared UMCP President Darryll J. Pines, PhD.
List of Accomplishments
Pines’ excitement seems well-founded by UM-IHC’s most recent tally of accomplishments: 10 industry partnerships have been formed, more than 150 scientific papers published, two scientific patents submitted, 26 grant submissions in just the last quarter, and one spin-off company created as a result of faculty work. More than 70 faculty and staff members now call the North Bethesda headquarters home, but the prospects of such rapid success seemed uncertain at first.
Reflecting on the months leading up to UM-IHC’s formation, UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, said critics doubted such an ambitious collaboration could ever work. “People said to me, you can't do that. Those three [UMB, UMCP, and UMMS] don't fit together. But in fact, they fit together remarkably well,” he said. “And what we found out was that our medical system was really very advanced, not just in keeping data, and I don't want to underestimate the keeping of the data as important, but also in interpreting the data with AI with feet on the ground with practical implications of here's what these data mean when you actually are taking care of patients.”
The patient data to which Jarrell referred are the de-identified, encrypted, and HIPAA-protected health records of 2 million Marylanders, explained Mohan Suntha, MD, MBA, president and CEO of UMMS. “The value of the data that the medical system brings is defined by the diversity of the data, which represents the diversity of the communities that we are blessed to serve,” he explained. “So, what's the vision? What do you expect us to be? I want you to think Silicon Valley. I want you to think about the future of health care computing and the ability to impact the nation and the world, to solve big health care problems.”
UM-IHC is supported financially by the partner institutions, MPower, and Montgomery County government.
“I'm really happy that we also achieved something we looked for in Montgomery County, which is bringing an academic research institution into Montgomery County,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. “We also hope the institute, with its research internships and fellowship opportunities, will help us expand our life sciences and tech workforce.”
The county was instrumental in securing UM-IHC’s workspace. The 27,000-square-foot high-tech complex is located in North Bethesda, Md., along Montgomery County’s I-270 Biotech Corridor — a 15-mile stretch that includes more than 300 life science companies employing some 26,000 people. Proximity to the NIH, the FDA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) creates a critical mass of life science innovation. As impressive as it is, though, UM-IHC’s current facility is only temporary. Less than a mile to the east, work has already begun on a $200 million complex at the North Bethesda Metrorail station, and the team is growing.
Core Faculty of the UM-IHC
Co-executive directors Bradley Maron, MD, and Adam Porter, PhD, and co-director Warren D’Souza, PhD, MBA, were eager to show off for the 80 to 90 guests with a few examples of UM-IHC’s current partnerships and projects.
“Today, I'm delighted to announce our partnerships with AstraZeneca and 2020 gene systems,” announced Maron, quickly mentioning other ongoing partnerships, one with the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center developing better models to identify Maryland residents who are at high risk for preventable diseases, including lung cancer, and another with NIH to help predict antibiotic resistance in patients with severe infections when they enter a hospital.
Introducing another partner, the FDA, Maron explained, “FDA scientists at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health will be working here on site with us to detect bias in artificial intelligence, which is, in turn, used in medical software systems.”
“I'm very excited to announce, as it was said before, that we are in final stages of an agreement that will allow for FDA scientists to actually be here on this floor, working alongside university researchers and clinicians,” said Aldo Badano, PhD, director of the FDA’s Division of Imaging, Diagnostics and Software Reliability. “This convergence between the FDA regulatory science expertise and the IHC's innovation, both in the university systems, in the health systems, and also in industries that are associated with the partnership really promises to bring benefits to patients, which is always our first customer at FDA, but also in workforce development, which FDA really appreciates.”
Hands-On Examples
None of the talk, however, explains the real-world impact of big data working with advanced computing quite like hands-on examples, which Porter and members of his UM-IHC team were happy to show off at a half-dozen workstations after the speeches concluded.
“So, this demo is actually fascinating,” Porter declared, smiling with what looked like a real beating heart on a table paired with a virtual copy on a large video monitor. “We have the right kind of mathematics to know the exact number of cameras and the placement of the cameras that we need in order to get a really high-quality, photorealistic 3-D representation of a physical object.” From those images, he said, the team can then translate those images into what he called a digital twin.
“For example, the beating heart model that you see here, we imagine that a medical surgeon might look at that heart model and say, ‘I need to do a certain kind of surgery. Let me plan that out here inside the computer, and then when I have to do it in real life, I'll be better at better at it, right?' So, you might even think of like a flight simulator. This could be a kind of flight simulator for surgeries,” Porter said.
Dozens of policymakers, business, and government biotech leaders also had the chance to experience the impact of some of UM-IHC’s extraordinary computing power for themselves with a virtual reality training module for physician assistants. With headsets on, participants found themselves immersed in a virtual medical examination, one they could see and hear from any angle, even walking around the patient and provider with lifelike perspectives. Called HoloCamera, the technology uses AI and extremely powerful and fast computing to create an experience that quickly bridges classroom training to real-life clinical work.
“Medical education is just changing rapidly. For example, in our medical school, we have gross anatomy, which hasn't changed for 200 years, but we're limited by how big our class sizes can be, by the availability of people that donate their bodies for medical education,” explained Mark Gladwin, MD, vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine. With the use of immersive visualization and augmented reality, he explained, students could be in the classroom dissecting while other students around the state or the nation could be virtually “standing next to them, touching, feeling, experience something, but they're not really in that room. So, there's an incredible opportunity for medical education to be in the operating room.”
But if recent advances in machine learning and AI are the spark — the fuel is clearly big data. At the heart of UM-IHC are the de-identified data records of millions of UMMS patients. Humans alone could never sort through all of that to glean anything useful. But in those records lie the correlations of patient experiences that might unlock the secrets of any number of diseases.
An early proponent of the UM-IHC collaboration, Gladwin was also quick to envision a wide array of future benefits to health and medical education. “The partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, with the computational scientists from College Park and the biologic medical scientists from UMB is just an incredible three-part collaboration,” he said. “It allows us to reach out and identify individuals that are at risk, for example, of developing kidney disease, at risk for developing heart disease, or, in this example behind me [pointing to another display], at risk for overdose from fentanyl.”
“We can use that data to sort of survey 2 million people and maybe a change happened that wouldn't be identified by a doctor and clinic, that could be picked up by a system that wouldn't sleep, that uses advanced mathematics and to really change the outcomes for that patient.”
About UM-IHC
The University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC) in North Bethesda, Md., is the hub for health computing innovation and collaboration in Montgomery County.
UM-IHC merges the computational expertise, clinical expertise, biomedical innovation, health data, and academic resources of the University of Maryland, College Park; the University of Maryland, Baltimore; and the University of Maryland Medical System to innovate health care delivery and support the Montgomery County life science community.
Partnering with the nearby critical mass of federal agencies and biotech industries, UM-IHC uses advanced computing to improve well-being and quality of life, fight disease, and enhance outcomes for all people across Maryland and beyond.
UM-IHC is a signature initiative of the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State, which provides funding support along with Montgomery County.