Amazon Net Providers Honors Dr. Azizi Seixas for Driving Well being Care Innovation

Newswise — Azizi Seixas, Ph.D., founding director of the Media and Innovation Lab (The MIL) on the College of Miami Miller Faculty of Medication, has been chosen by Amazon Net Providers (AWS) as one among 10 U.S. Training Champions. The inaugural program showcases innovators driving digital transformation with cloud computing within the areas of educating, studying, analysis, and tutorial medication. AWS acknowledged Dr. Seixas and his fellow honorees on the IMAGINE 2022 convention in Seattle in August.

In accordance with AWS, the world’s most broadly adopted cloud platform, the Training Champions program will amplify the tales and voices of those visionary leaders and assist innovation with AWS providers. Whereas it’s not a grant, honorees will obtain entry to grants and alternatives to broaden the impression of their work aimed toward remodeling and advancing training.

“Being honored by AWS on this first cohort of U.S. Training Champions is validation for the imaginative and prescient that we’ve,” mentioned Dr. Seixas, who is also affiliate director for the Heart for Translational Sleep and Circadian Sciences and affiliate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences on the Miller Faculty. “We wish to reimagine well being care. We wish to reimagine tutorial medication. We wish to reimagine well being and well-being throughout 5 core verticals: training, analysis, scientific care, enterprise alternatives, service, and outreach.

“We’re the inaugural champions, and Amazon has requested us to assist make this into a worldwide program,” he mentioned.

Innovation Taking Place on the Miller Faculty

Dr. Seixas is understood internationally as a thought chief in precision and customized inhabitants well being, digital well being expertise and innovation, and his use of novel analytical instruments like synthetic intelligence (AI) and machine studying to deal with difficult public well being points. Amongst his different roles on the Miller Faculty, Dr. Seixas is main the College of Miami’s Digital Therapeutics vertical within the Institute of Information Science and Computing.

In its announcement about this 12 months’s Academic Champions, AWL highlighted Dr. Seixas’s digital twin venture, which analyzes the hyperlink between poor sleep, environmental components, and persistent sickness, utilizing off-the-shelf wearable and nearable units. The purpose of the analysis is to review associations between a person’s underlying biomedical well being parameters, environmental components resembling air high quality, gentle and noise air pollution, and situations resembling sleep apnea, coronary heart illness, and dementia in underserved and disenfranchised communities.

AI will be utilized to knowledge collected from in-home and on-body sensors to create a person’s digital twin, by way of which potential interventions and remedy choices will be utilized, and potential outcomes evaluated, earlier than making use of them in follow.

This is just one of Dr. Seixas’s many initiatives aimed toward creating new paradigms in well being and wellness, resulting in the supply of exact, customized medication.

Dr. Seixas is main the Science, Know-how, Engineering, Math, Social, Emotional Studying (STEMSEL) program on the Miller Faculty, which goals to develop and domesticate modern methods to disseminate trusted social and emotional psychological well being info that engages the general public.

“Every of the core verticals has its personal worth propositions. Our price proposition for training is that we wish to infuse and create a tradition of innovation all through the College of Miami. We’re doing so by creating an modern curriculum in addition to academic experiences the place we are able to create the brand new phenotype of scholar, the brand new phenotype {of professional}, the brand new phenotype of doctor, the brand new phenotype of the scientist,” Dr. Seixas mentioned. “The consequence would be the innovator-scientist, innovator-clinician, innovator-educator. We’re democratizing and decentralizing entry to innovation in an effort to create that tradition.”

Tasks within the analysis vertical embrace the NIH-funded analysis aimed toward enhancing coronary heart well being amongst rural and concrete Latinos, of which the digital twin venture is a component.

“We’re tackling maternal psychological well being, to deprived populations globally, by way of the usage of digital actuality. As an alternative of utilizing costly headsets that price $600, we’re teaming up with a corporation by way of which we are able to supply cardboard headsets for $30 and ship high-quality digital psychological well being,” Dr. Seixas mentioned.

“We’re additionally engaged on digital therapeutics and are about to roll out a venture centered on growing old, taking a look at how sleep and bodily exercise can scale back cognitive impairment. We’re utilizing one among at this time’s most modern cognitive assessments — a 10-minute evaluation that makes use of digital neuro-signatures by way of augmented actuality. The great thing about this evaluation is that we are able to predict cognitive impairment and dementia 8 to 10 years earlier than onset. That’s an enormous recreation changer.”

Getting the Phrase Out

Being honored by the AWS will expose Dr. Seixas’s analysis to potential collaborations and funding past conventional funding sources, he mentioned.

“In expertise and innovation, you want networks. Getting NIH grants funded on this rapidly altering house usually takes a 12 months and half to 2 years,” Dr. Seixas mentioned. “By stepping into extra numerous environments and platforms to achieve individuals with the means to fund our work, we’re capable of doubtlessly create one thing inside six months. That’s exceptional in medical analysis.

“Already, primarily based on this announcement, I used to be requested by the planners and organizers of one of many largest cloud expertise conferences to provide a chat.”

This is a chance for the Miller Faculty and College of Miami to steer in South Florida’s quest to change into the world’s new expertise hub, in response to Dr. Seixas.