Healthcare waiting lists: one of the major national challenges addressed 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 objectives of Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, whose Innovation area, in partnership with Cero.ai, was recently awarded the project "Prioritization of patients on waiting lists using Artificial Intelligence" by the Ministry of Health.
"The challenge is huge: we want to use cutting-edge data science and artificial intelligence tools for a specific problem that affects a significant number of People, Peoplesays Adrián Soto, director of innovation at Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.
The project focuses on the area of patient prioritization and consists of three stages: the first is diagnosis and evaluation of the information to 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 the training of the models," emphasizes the director of Innovation at IMFD.
"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 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 step, the creation of alternative prioritization models, using classic supervised learning techniques and modern techniques based on large language models (LLMs), "which we hope to be able to apply, for example, to the recognition and categorization of free text in medical records: one of the aspects that we know is one of the most complex in the development of these models, as the texts can be irregular and difficult for a model to understand," says 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 respecting the privacy and security of patient data.
"Since leaving my academic position at the University of Chile in 2021, one of my goals has been to collaborate with research centers. Given all the time I spent as an associate researcher at IMFD, cooperating with them was the natural next step," says Jorge Pérez of Cero.ai. "My interest is in combining the best of both worlds: combining the execution capacity of a health-focused startup like Cero with the applied research capacity of the IMFD with the support of its academics and technology transfer department. It's difficult, you have to look for opportunities, and here, with the award, we have that opportunity. We're not going to waste it," adds the former researcher, who was one of the first researchers at Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.
This type of development is very important to the IMFD : "Without a doubt, in Chile we have the capabilities to develop high-level artificial intelligence models that can and should respond to the needs of oursociety," says Adrián Soto.
About Zero
Zero helps increase the capacity of healthcare centers without creating a single new cubicle or hiring a new specialist, coordinating the care of millions of patients every month in public and private healthcare centers. Its solutions combine three aspects: 1) interoperability with hospital and clinic systems, 2) effective communication channels, mainly WhatsApp, and 3) 100% patient adaptation, so that patients have a comfortable and smooth experience. As a startup, Cero went through the Y-Combinator acceleration program in Silicon Valley, responsible for accelerating companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Rappi, and Fintual. For more information, visit www.cero.ai.