Penn Medicine Accelerator Program to Boost AI-Powered Projects Targeting Blindness and Cervical Cancer

Artificial intelligence (AI) is having a moment, partly due to its potential to address health outcomes and health care efficiency, and new applications of the technology factor prominently into the pair of projects chosen for the latest round of Penn Medicine’s Innovation Accelerator Program. Run through the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation (CHTI), this year’s iteration of the program will feature a project centered on using AI -enabled image analysis from advanced cameras to prevent blindness among patients with diabetes, and one designed to use an AI language processing technique to increase the speed and accuracy at which reports from cervical cancer screens are interpreted and communicated.

“We encourage teams to ‘fall in love with the problem, not the solution,’ so we’re excited that we have the chance to do things like reduce blindness and the cost of care by catching diabetic retinopathy earlier, and improve cancer outcomes through creating more efficient screening processes,” said Roy Rosin, MBA, chief innovation officer at Penn Medicine. “Our goal in both these cases is to help patients and reduce burdens for clinicians, who want to help more patients. AI is simply a new way to go after old, important problems like these more effectively.”

The AI-powered projects selected this year are “Diabetic Eye Screening Interventions with Teleretinal Exams in Primary Care (eyeSITE),” led by Corinne Rhodes, MD, an associate professor of General Internal Medicine, and Lama Al-Aswad, MD, MPH, a professor of Ophthalmology, as well as a PRECISE Center faculty member in Penn’s School Engineering and Applied Sciences, and “C3P3 Centralized Cervical Cancer Prevention Program at Penn,” led by Danielle Burkland, MD, an associate professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology.