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The leadership and staff of the RCMI-CCRHD Integrated Informatics Services (IIS) participated in the IV Brazilian Congress of Assistive Technology. The Congress was held on November 6- 10, 2023 in Florianópolis, Brazil. The event provided a space for dialogue and knowledge exchange to promote scientific dissemination related to research and development of technologies for inclusion and improvement of the quality of life for people with disabilities, impairments, and reduced mobility. Dr. Abiel Roche-Lima, Keynote Speaker and IIS Core Leader, shared his experience in "Artificial Intelligence Applied to Health Disparities and Assistive Technology". Dr. Frances Heredia, IIS Specialist, presentation focused on the "Promotion of individualized care and protection in the management of epilepsy. A Review of Pre-ictal Phase Prediction in Assistive Technologies".
 

On November 29th, the leaders of the five facilities supported by the Research Capacity Core of the RCMI Center for Collaborative Research in Health Disparities held their biannual meeting. Topics discussed included the preparation of progress reports, the current status of facility services, and plans for the next year. The information gathered will be included in the programmatic progress reports submitted to NIMHD.

New Director's Corner Blog Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month In celebration of the history, culture, and contributions of Hispanics and Latinos, the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) is highlighting one of its flagship initiatives. The Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) program, launched in 2021 is increasing diversity in the Al/ML workforce and building a more inclusive research community to address health disparities and advance health equity.
 

The RCMI-Center for Collaborative Research in Health Disparities congratulates Dr. Roche Lima, Lead of the RCMI-CCRHD Research Capacity Core, for being selected as one of the recipients of the Consortium Development Research Program grant award offered by the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) program. Dr. Roche-Lima's research project is titled "Machine Leaming (ML) Methods for Identifying Reference Intervals of Cardiometabolic Related Laboratory Tests for Hispanic Populations - MLM-RIHisp"

On September 17th, Dr. Frances Heredia presented an overview of the "Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Health Disparities Research (AI/ML+HDR)" course at The Biennial Southeast Regional IDeA Conference, hosted by South Carolina INBRE. The Integrated Informatics Service research team at the RCMI Center for Collaborative Research in Health Disparities developed the course. The conference was held in Columbia, SC and featured sessions dedicated to biomedical research and data science. Dr. Heredia's presentation specifically focused on Educational Approaches to Data Science.

The technical specialists associated with the Integrated Informatics Services of RMCI-CCRHD, Brenda Nieves and Joshua Meléndez, participated in the first congress of the Internet Society Puerto Rico Chapter. The event was held on September 29th at the University of Puerto Rico, Carolina Campus. The following topics were discussed at the Congress: Internet accessibility for people with functional diversity, technological devices that assist these individuals in accessing the Internet and all its functions, and the importance of Internet governance. The Internet Society is a non-profit organization that promotes the use, evolution, and open development of the Internet for all people in Puerto Rico and worldwide.

Abstract

Reference intervals (Ris) for clinical laboratory values are extremely important for diagnostics and treatment of patients. However, the determination of these ranges is costly and time-consuming. As a result, often different unverified Ris are used in practice for the same analyte and the same range is used for all patients despite evidence that the values are gender, age, and ethnicity dependent. Moreover, the abnormal flags are rudimentary, merely indicating if a value is within the RI. At the same time, clinical lab data generated in the everyday medical practice contains a wealth of information, that given the correct methodology, can help determine the Ris for each specific segment of the population, including populations that suffer from health disparities. In this work, we develop unsupervised machine learning methods, based on Gaussian mixtures, to determine Ris of analytes related to chronic kidney disease, using millions of routine lab results for the Puerto Rican population. We show that the measures are both gender and age dependent and we find evidence for normal age-related organ function deterioration and failure.

We also show that the joint distribution of measures improves the diagnostic value of the lab results.

The RCMI Center for Collaborative Research in Health Disparities (RCMI-CCRHD) congratulates Drs. Eduardo Tosado and Adriana Meléndez for being awarded an AIM-AHEAD Research Fellowship. This fellowship program engages early-career researchers from under-represented populations to actively participate in biomedical research that uses Al/ML methodologies on Electronic Health Records, clinical cohorts and genomic data across various populations. Dr. Abiel Roche-Lima, RCMI-CCRHD Research Capacity Core leader, will mentor both recipients.
 

The Integrated Informatics Services facility (IIS) of the RCMI Center for Collaborative Research in Health Disparities (RCMI-CCRHD) collaborated in a summer internship with the Cancer Prevention and Control (CAPAC) Research Training Program at the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center (UPRCCC). Mr. Leonel Pérez, a graduate student at the School of Public Health, trained on Machine Learning techniques applied to cancer research under the mentoring of Dr. Abiel Roche-Lima. During the CAPAC Scientific Day on August 3rd, 2023, Mr. Pérez presented the poster "Exploratory Study to Identify Conditions Associated with Hispanic Breast Cancer Patients Using Machine Learning Methods" (Authors:Leonel Pérez, Frances Heredia, Abiel Roche-Lima). CAPAC-UPRCCC and RCMI-CCRHD are funded by the National Institute of Cancer and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The leadership and staff of RCMI-CCRHD Integrated Informatics Services participated in the 2nd AIM-AHEAD Annual Meeting held in North Bethesda, Maryland. The team made three poster presentations and engaged in various workshops and strategic meetings. AIM-AHEAD collaboration focuses on enhancing the participation and representation of researchers and communities currently underrepresented in the development of Al/ML models.