By Lois Thomson
“The future isn’t just coming – it’s already here and powered by the cutting-edge technology!” David Newman, Ph.D., exclaimed. “And it holds a massive potential to transform the healthcare system.” Dr. Newman, a biostatistician and professor at the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing (CELCON) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), shared his excitement about the new initiative of the AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) Club that came into being to introduce the current trending AI/ML technologies to the nurses at the College.
Dr. Newman said that a few years ago, he and former Dean Safiya George, Ph.D., had discussed the college’s direction and the steps needed to shift paradigms. “We talked about data science’s role in healthcare research and practice as we move forward. The field of research in nursing and healthcare science has changed so dramatically over the past five to 10 years; it’s scary how different we’re looking in the future landscape.”
With that in mind, they decided to hire and get people involved. “We talked about creating courses, like a graduate certificate program and a master’s degree eventually, in healthcare data science. Having an AI/ML Club could aid in curriculum development for the healthcare data science program in the CELCON. This initiative marks the beginning of an era of the healthcare data science research center at FAU.” Dr. Newman added that despite starting the Club in the CELCON, it is not just for nurses only. “We want to have everyone. So, we opened it to the college – anyone in the university who wanted to explore AI in Healthcare.” He said that nearly 100 people across the university are involved right now.
Debarshi Datta, Ph.D., an assistant professor in data science at the CELCON, has expertise in developing AI-driven decision support systems to understand disease prognosis better. Dr. Datta is also the founding member of the AI/ML Club. He said, “We have people from the College of Medicine who joined us, the College of Engineering, College of Education – ones throughout all FAU colleges.” Dr. Datta stated that they decided to create a common platform because they could offer students, staff, and faculty an opportunity to come together and share their ideas and research.
Dr. Newman said the AI Club is also opening the door for partnerships and research opportunities for those outside FAU. Dr. Datta pointed out that partnerships, such as with Memorial Healthcare System, are already taking place.
Dr. Newman said that people in engineering or computer science might be skilled at AI modeling but do not know the health science facets. “Just like people who come out of nursing are good on the health aspects side, but not necessarily the informatics and ML. So, they meet in the middle; they learn from each other, which is great to have happen.”
Subhosit Ray, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the CELCON, is another team member. He mentioned using AI/ML to handle large electronic health records, predict diseases, and identify clinical determinants of disease progression. For one project, he, along with Dr. Datta and Dr. Newman, among others, performed a study on more than 5,000 patients from South Florida diagnosed with COVID-19 and concluded, “The model not only predicts mortality or disease severity but also allows clinicians to identify important clinical features that are crucial for disease management from the healthcare reports of the patients from a multi-hospital system.” He also said that the data on which the ML model was built contains a multitude of different co-morbidities, including diabetes, diarrhea, and heart disease, as well as social demographics such as age, weight, and history of medications.
(The findings were captured in an MDPI Journal article titled, “Feature Identification Using Interpretability Machine Learning Predicting Risk Factors for Disease Severity of In-Patients with COVID-19 in South Florida” (2024-08-26): https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics14171866. More information about the AI COVID study can be found here: transforming-care (fau.edu).)
Despite having this type of information, Dr. Ray said, “We don’t expect nurses to become experts in AI, but rather have them get a feel for the data. Our AI/ML Club aims to create an interest in nursing research that gears them toward a smooth transition to new cutting-edge technologies they will experience when entering practice.”
Dr. Newman concluded, “We want to use the best tools possible, including AI along with traditional statistics. AI is not a replacement for statistics; it enhances various research aspects. AI has so many advantages, it’s another tool we need to make sure our researchers and practicing nurses have available. As we have seen in the industry, these changes will improve research, hospital and provider services, and overall patient care.”
For more information, call (561) 297-6261 or visit www.nursing.fau.edu.