UTHealth Houston awarded more than $5 million in federal funding to realize full potential of health data

GQ Zhang, PhD, vice president and chief data scientist at UTHealth Houston and principal investigator for two of the awards. (Photo by UTHealth Houston)

Researchers at UTHealth Houston have been awarded three grants totaling more than $5 million from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to address one of the biggest challenges in modern health care: building enhanced data resources and technologies to accelerate scientific discovery and improve decision-making in medicine.

“Critical medical data exists but is often disorganized, inconsistent, or underutilized,” said GQ Zhang, PhD, vice president and chief data scientist at UTHealth Houston and principal investigator for two of the awards. “The grants will fund projects that will turn fragmented information into actionable knowledge that has the potential to improve the health outcomes for millions.”

The following projects will be funded for four years:

• A team led by Holger Eltzschig, MD, PhD — professor of anesthesiology, critical care and pain medicine; John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Distinguished University Chair; and director of the Center for Perioperative Medicine at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston — along with Hongfang Liu, PhD — vice president of learning health systems at UTHealth Houston and the D. Bradley McWilliams Chair, director of the Center for Translational AI Excellence and Applications in Medicine, and professor at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston — has received a $2.2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the NIH, to develop a perioperative organ injury knowledge base. The goal of this resource is to help researchers better understand and prevent organ damage before and after surgery. It is an effort to compile global research findings into a single, accessible system, potentially speeding up the enhancement of surgical outcomes.

• Samden Lhatoo, MD — professor, John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Distinguished Chair, and director of the Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at McGovern Medical School — and Zhang received a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to create the International Seizure and Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) Research Repository, poised to become the world’s largest seizure repository of its kind. Zhang and Lhatoo will use the $2.1 million grant to unify and globalize seizure and SUDEP data, empowering researchers worldwide.

• Zhang; Lhatoo; Licong Cui, PhD, associate professor at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics; and Xiaojin Li, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at McGovern Medical School, received a $1 million grant funded through the NSF Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science program, which will help develop new methods to collect, connect, analyze, and interpret health-related data in ways that can potentially transform biomedical research and future medicine.  

“These awards support the interdisciplinary work at the intersection of data science, artificial intelligence, engineering, and health,” said LaTanya J. Love, MD, dean of McGovern Medical School and its H. Wayne Hightower Distinguished Professor in the Medical Sciences. “Each of these projects will help turn scattered data into knowledge that empowers health care professionals, accelerates scientific breakthroughs, and ultimately improves patient outcomes.”

Zhang is also co-director of the Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies, professor of neurology at McGovern Medical School, and the medical school’s Distinguished Chair in Digital Innovation. Together with Liu and Cui, Zhang was recently awarded a $27.2 million grant by the National Institute on Aging to lead a national initiative using real-world data to unlock discoveries about Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

“These three additional awards in data science and artificial intelligence demonstrate UTHealth Houston as a national powerhouse in leading data-driven biomedical discovery,” Zhang said.

NIH:

This material is based on project abstracts for NIH Award R24HL180372 and R24NS143946 under the Biomedical Data Repositories and Knowledgebases program.

NSF:

This material is based on the project abstract for NSF Award IIS2500624 under the Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science program.