UCD's Data Revolution in Health
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UCD is home to world leaders in predictive modelling, precision medicine, bioclinical informatics and new health technologies, generating real impact and breakthroughs in the clinical setting to make a real difference in patients' lives today.
Working with international collaborators and our partner hospitals, UCD experts are developing cutting-edge AI technologies and data-driven approaches to provide solutions that are helping clinicians, industry and society make better healthcare decisions.
AI_PREMie: Saving lives
It's a startling statistic, that every 60 seconds a mother or baby dies as a result of the pregnancy complication known as preeclampsia. Prof Patricia Maguire and her team are working to save those lives through a revolutionary risk stratification tool known as AI_PREMie, a solution thatassists clinical decision making in real-time, enabling more accurate, earlier diagnosis and personalised treatment that will save lives.
The transdisciplinary team behind AI_PREMie, drawsupon cutting-edge biomedical, clinical and machine-learning expertise including consultant haematologist and Full Clinical Professor Fionnuala Ní Áinle, UCD School of Medicine, and consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Professor Mary Higgins from the National Maternity Hospital, in addition to
biomolecular and biomedical researchers from UCD Conway SPHERE research group and AI experts from UCD School of Computer Science - in partnership with Microsoft and SAS.
AI_PREMie is currently being piloted in the three main maternity hospitals in Ireland, capturing 50% of all Irish births (National Maternity Hospital, Rotunda Hospital and Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital). The project was ranked by IRCAI-UNESCO among the Top 100 AI Solutions for Sustainable Development. (opens in a new window)Learn more.
Prof Patricia Maguire is also Director of UCD Discovery Institute and AI Healthcare Hub (multidisciplinary, data-focused healthcare project accelerator within the institute) and is the leading academic on the Maternal Health strand of UCD's institutional research and innovation partnership with Northeastern University, Boston, US.
Read her interview, along with Prof Jared Auclair, Director of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Vice Provost for Research Economic Development and Director of Bioinnovation at NU, and academic lead of the Biologics and Advanced Manufacturing strand.
"Combining the strengths of the multi-disciplinary AI_PREMie and (opens in a new window)PROTECT (led by Northeastern University) teams we want to create new AI-powered solutions to transform maternal health across the globe. For example, it is vitally important to have sufficient high-quality training data to ensure that AI-based algorithms like AI_PREMie, once in routine deployment in hospitals, will always make an accurate decision. Training AI_PREMie on different patient populations across the world will maximise its performance enabling our team to deliver on our collective mission to get our new test to every patient who needs it across the world as we really do believe it will save lives," she said.
SBI: The Data Revolution
Established in 2009 under the direction of Professor Walter Kolch and Professor Boris Kholodenko, Systems Biology Ireland (SBI) has been leading the digital revolution towards accessible Precision Medicine for all.
For the past two decades, biology and medicine have been morphing into data driven sciences. The arrival of genome sequencing in the clinic has shown the importance of data analysis and what quantum leaps can be made based on it. Presently, other ‘omics’ technologies (transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) are not far away from introduction into clinical labs.
Now, Professor Kolch and his teams are shepherding in next generation healthcare through groundbreaking projects under SBI. Read more.
Cracking cancer with code
UCD's leading experts in precision medicine and cancer research say Ireland should be harnessing the power of data and computing to revolutionise cancer treatment, and evolving the life sciences sector.
Read the op ed from Prof Walter Kolch and Prof William Gallagher, on how Ireland can capitalise on unique strengths that could make it a leader in computational medical and biological sciences.
How Ireland could envisage a richer and broader context for life science industry, enabled by research based on strategic partnerships that focuses across the value chain from early stage discovery to clinical application. Read the op ed.
