Melax Tech and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have been awarded a grant of USD$2.5 million by the National Institute of Health (NIH) for research into the early detection of dementia.
The project, led by specialists in biomedical natural language processing (NLP), aims to build and validate a clinical decision support system (CDS) for early cognitive decline detection.
The study will use advanced deep learning and NLP algorithms to identify patients with cognitive decline signals from electronic health records (EHRs) and improve early diagnosis in primary care settings.
The project will focus on developing novel computational algorithms, including ontology, deep learning, and NLP, to identify patients with early cognitive decline using EHR with supporting evidence.
It will also work with frontline physicians to design, develop and evaluate a user-centered clinical decision-support system to identify and manage patients with cognitive decline and prompt personalised recommendations for timely care.
Melax Tech enables healthcare and life science organisations to use data science approaches such as AI / Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to extract information from biomedical textual data to solve real-world problems.
“This award is a recognition of our clinical NLP technologies,” Dr Jingcheng Du, NLP Director at Melax Tech and Principal Investigator on this award, commented.
“We will develop cutting-edge NLP algorithms to identify at-risk patients and extract cognitive concerns, symptoms, diagnosis, assessments, and social determinants of health (SDoH) factors from clinical notes. We are very excited to work closely with our clinical collaborators on implementing and validating these NLP algorithms.
Dr Frank Manion, VP for Innovations at Melax Tech, said: “Early intervention for Alzheimer’s is crucial with the projected increase in affected Americans and the corresponding cost of care. Our deep learning-based CDS aims to revolutionize primary care diagnosis and management and improve early detection accuracy for better patient outcomes.”
Lead researcher, Dr Li Zhou of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, added: “This study is a critical step in our mission to improve the lives of those affected by Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia.
“Using deep learning algorithms and electronic health records can revolutionise how we approach early detection and intervention for AD/ADRD.”