Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were awarded funding from the Augmented Intelligence in Medicine and Healthcare Initiative (AIM-HI) Coordinating Center at Kaiser Permanente for their project “Advancing Novel Approaches and Best Practices for Effective AI-Enabled Diagnosis using Randomized Trials, Algorithmovigilance, and Proactive Risk Assessment.”
Vanderbilt is one of five health care organizations to receive the funding, supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to pursue research projects deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to enhance diagnostic decision-making in health care. Awardees were each provided up to $750,000, effective in early 2024, for their projects.
Among the five grant recipients is a team led by Vanderbilt’s Peter Embí, MD, MS, primary principal investigator (PI).
“While AI has great potential to improve health care, there are relatively few studies looking at the actual impacts of its use in real-world practice,” said Embí, professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) and Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at VUMC.
This proposal plans to evaluate hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism (HA-VTE)-specific AI-driven clinical decision support (AI-CDS) systems across rural and urban sites, and adult and pediatric patients. The project team also plans to study and refine novel approaches for real-world algorithmovigilance, going beyond to focus on real-time and sustained monitoring of AI tools that are deployed and actively used in the health care system.
“Through this project, we will develop much-needed knowledge for using and monitoring AI tools across different health care settings and patient populations to ensure safe, effective and equitable care,” Embí said.
Co-PIs include DBMI’s Laurie Novak, PhD, MHSA, Megan Salwei PhD, MS, and Colin Walsh, MD, MA.
“This work will build on what we have learned about AI implementation and, using human centered design methods, develop new tools for the ongoing maintenance of AI models,” said Novak, associate professor and director of the Center of Excellence in Applied AI in DBMI. “With this project we are addressing AI readiness at the organizational level.”
“Our project leverages Vanderbilt’s internationally-recognized leadership in two key areas: 1) pragmatic randomized controlled trials to achieve a learning health system and 2) human-centered, clinically effective decision support delivered right to the bedside,” said Walsh, associate professor in DBMI, Medicine and Psychiatry.
Co-Investigators include Adam Wright, PHD, Bradley Malin, PhD, Sharon Davis, PhD, MS, Michael Matheny, MD, MS, MPH, Shannon Walker, MD, Allison Wheeler, MD, MSCI, Amanda Mixon, MD, MS, MSPH, and Benjamin French, PhD, MS. Learn more here.