The HSPH-HMS Translational Data Science Center for a Learning Healthcare System (CELEHS), led by Director Tianxi Cai, had a busy year organizing research initiatives and expanding collaborations with researchers at HSPH, HMS, VA, Partner’s Healthcare and Boston Children’s hospital. The center currently has identified around 30 key collaborators and 3 key focus areas (I) translational data science methodology; (II) portable knowledge systems; and (III) translational clinical research.
CELEHS activities this year included developing methods for modern clinical trials, predictive analytics, high dimensional data and real-world evidence. These methodology development activities engaged many local collaborators including Biostatistics junior faculty Junwei Liu and Rajarshi Mukherjee. We also worked with researchers from VA and University of Bordeaux to collaborate on assembling massive data and developing methods for cross-system and cross-language translation.
During the past year, CELEHS also started two collaborative projects methods for mining EHR data towards knowledge extraction and development of clinical decision support tools: the first involves developing clinical decision support tools to predict risk of intimate partner violence in collaboration with a team of radiologists and orthopedic surgeons led by Dr. Bharti Khurana. The second project, in collaboration Dr. Winnie Yip at HSPH, is working to create clinical decision support tools to assist in disease diagnosis in rural China.
Finally, CELEHS turned its attention toward developing the collaborators of the future. This year the Center supported Data Science in Action: “Convolutional Neural Networks for Self-Driving Cars”, a week-long summer introduction to programming and machine learning for high school students in which students programmed a neural network to recognize images and made self-driving toy cars. The program was a great success and we look forward to expanding it and moving forward with our mission in 2020!
