“The Veterans Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, is calling for members of the public to develop machine learning and artificial intelligence models to predict health outcomes related to the novel coronavirus.”
“The challenge opened at the beginning of June, and VHA representatives say 84 participants have registered so far.”
WHY IT MATTERS
“COVID-19 has a particularly deadly effect on those over the age of 65 and people with underlying conditions, such as heart disease or diabetes. Because many veterans fall into those categories, the VA has moved to implement several facets of a response plan – including providing outpatient care through telehealth, offering testing for the virus and implementing outreach.”
“Now, the VHA is asking scientists and analysts to use synthetic veteran health records to create and test computational models predicting COVID-19 related health outcomes in veterans.”
“The outcomes include COVID-19 status, length of hospitalization and time in the ICU, and mortality.”
“‘We encourage participants to use demographic data and the presence of comorbidities when developing their model to help precisionFDA and the VHA Innovation Ecosystem better understand how race, ethnicity, age, and comorbidities can affect the progression of COVID-19,’ said the VHA in a description of the challenge on the department’s site.”
“‘AI will be used to mine the data to look for predictive factors, including analyzing predictive value of each factor to then develop operation tools to guide clinical decisions within the VHA,’ said VHA Senior Innovation Fellow Amanda Purnell…” Read the full article here.
Source: VHA launches analytics challenge to predict COVID-19 outcomes – By Kat Jercich, June 22, 2020. Healthcare IT News.
