AHA Awards $2M to Artificial Intelligence, Precision Medicine Studies

February 18, 2020 - The American Heart Association (AHA) Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine has awarded seven researchers a total of $2 million for three grants focused on advancing artificial intelligence, machine learning, and precision medicine.

The grants include the American Heart Association Grand Challenge: Precision Health and Precision Medicine grant; the American Heart Association and Amazon Web Services 4.0 Data Grant Portfolio: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning grant; and the American Heart Association and Amazon Web Services 4.0 Data Grant Portfolio: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Training Grants.

The AHA Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine has funded more than 93 grants totaling more than $30.2 million since 2014. The institute has established several research initiatives designed to advance disease treatments and therapies.

For example, the institute’s One Brave Idea project aims to develop strategies to combat coronary heart disease, while the Center for Accelerated Drug Discovery leverages supercomputing to reduce the time to market for new drugs and therapies by up to 50 percent.

Applicants for the grants included some of the brightest minds in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and precision medicine. Each grant includes an Amazon Web Services (AWS) credit for $50,000 per year for use on the AHA Precision Medicine Platform, a central hub for the cardiovascular and stroke research community.

With the platform, scientists can access large and diverse datasets and cloud-based workspaces that facilitate innovative computing, analytics, and collaboration for new discoveries.

Research data sources that were eligible for consideration included digital images, EHRs, genetics, wearable devices, smartphones, other sensor-related technologies, and community engagement data.

Awardees used modern experimental techniques, combined with robust data sources, to make major strides in understanding or deploying precision medicine or precision health practices. Recipients of the grants include Cui Tao, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, who will receive $1 million over four years for a project using AI on dual antiplatelet therapy duration.

Andrew McCulloch, PhD, of the University of California San Diego, will receive $200,000 over two years for a project using cardiac atlases for machine learning in congenital heart disease. Other projects involve using AI to improve care for cardiac arrest survivors, pediatric cardiac patients, and stroke survivors.

The new grants add to the efforts of the AHA Precision Medicine Platform. In 2018, AHA partnered with the Duke Clinical Research Institute to develop and test machine learning methods on the Precision Medicine Platform, enabling researchers to collaborate and improve patient care.

“The strategic alliance that we’ve made with Duke is so important, because we have the experts who have the deep knowledge of all of the artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that are available. The partnership allows the American Heart Association and Duke to come together to create new tools that are not even available today,” Jennifer Hall, PhD, Chief of the AHA Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, told HealthITAnalytics.com.

“There is great potential in machine learning and other artificial intelligence methods to discover new insights. There are new findings showing that retina scans are an early predictor of heart disease, for example, and we never would have had that information before had we not been able to pool all this data together and bring artificial intelligence and machine learning to the table.”