Health waiting lists: one of the major national challenges tackled by Innovación IMFD and Cero.ai

Using the knowledge and advances created in academia to solve problems that affect people: this is one of the goals of the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), whose Innovation area, in partnership with Cero.ai, recently won the project “Prioritization of patients on waiting lists using Artificial Intelligence” from the Ministry of Health.

“The challenge is significant: we want to use data science and artificial intelligence tools that are at the cutting edge of research, for a concrete problem that affects a significant number of people,” highlights Adrián Soto, director of the Innovation area at the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data.

The project focuses on the area of patient prioritization, and consists of three stages: the first is the diagnosis and evaluation of the information that will be used, with a focus on data quality and consistency. “One of the most decisive components when creating artificial intelligence or machine learning models is having quality data that allows for training the models,” highlights the IMFD Innovation director.

“We hope to take advantage of everything that the Ministry of Health has been building with the Interoperable Waiting Times platforms. We are going to connect to that platform to obtain from there the information that will allow us to build prioritization models,” adds Jorge Pérez, Co-founder of Cero.ai and part of the team that will be working on the project.

As a second stage, the creation of alternative prioritization models will begin, using classic supervised learning techniques, as well as modern techniques based on large language models (LLMs), “which we hope to apply, for example, in the recognition and categorization of free text in medical records: one of the aspects we know is among the most complex in the development of these models, since the texts can be irregular and difficult for a model to understand,” states Adrián Soto.

After testing, and as a third stage, the team hopes to jointly develop a definitive prioritization model, that has the capacity to extract relevant information, while at the same time respecting the privacy and security of patients’ data.

“Since I left my academic position at Universidad de Chile in 2021, one of my goals has been collaboration with research centers. Given all the time I spent as an associate researcher at IMFD, cooperating with them was the natural step,” highlights Jorge Pérez of Cero.ai. “My interest is to mix the best of both worlds: combining the execution capacity of a health-focused startup like Cero, with the applied research capacity that IMFD has with the support of its academics and the technology transfer department. It is difficult, you have to look for the opportunities, and here, with this award, we have the chance. We are not going to waste it,” adds the former researcher, who was one of the first researchers at the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data.

For IMFD, this type of development is very relevant: “Without a doubt, in Chile we have the capabilities to develop high-level artificial intelligence models, which can and should respond to the needs of our society,” highlights Adrián Soto.

About Cero

Cero helps increase the care capacity of healthcare centers without creating a single new consultation room or hiring a new specialist, coordinating the care of millions of patients every month in public and private care centers. Its solutions combine three aspects: 1) interoperability with hospital and clinic systems, 2) effective communication channels, primarily WhatsApp, and 3) 100% adaptation to the patient, so that they have a comfortable and hassle-free experience. As a startup, Cero went through the Y-Combinator acceleration program in Silicon Valley, responsible for accelerating companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Rappi, and Fintual. For more information, visit www.cero.ai.