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CardSS Lab Receives COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant from UW PHI

deep learning model with coronavirus

Image c/o UW Bioengineering

We are delighted to share the news that our team received funding to support our work from the University of Washington Population Health Initiative on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to study electrocardiogram (EKG) signals! The premise of our work is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint COVID-19 patients at risk for adverse cardiac outcomes using a single EKG recording acquired at hospital intake. Identifying these patients most in need of care will allow clinicians to monitor and provide treatment, while minimizing their own risk and eliminating unnecessary testing. AI has been used successfully in similar areas, such as identifying patients with atrial fibrillation using EKGs acquired in the absence of arrhythmia. Thus, we surmise that AI can be used to identify those with risk of life-threatening cardiovascular complications using COVID-19 intake EKGs.

The lead trainee researcher for this project is BioE MS student Amber (Zih-Hua) Chen. Our co-investigators for this project are from UW Epidemiology (Dr. Alison Fohner) and UW Cardiology (Dr. Arun Sridhar, Dr. Neal Chatterjee, Dr. Jeanne Poole).

We are grateful for coverage of this story from UW Bioengineering as the UW Institute for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine. Stay tuned for more exciting details as we proceed along this project.