Aug. 28, 2024
Artificial intelligence (AI) has proved to be a useful tool that promises numerous benefits across healthcare and other fields. AI continues to evolve within healthcare with the goal of supporting patients and staff while improving outcomes, potentially lowering healthcare costs and benefiting population health.
Its success, however, is inherently tied to both the quality and quantity of the data used. A massive amount of high-quality data is necessary to train AI algorithms to get accurate results that will work with a broad range of patients.
Through its patient care and research initiatives, Mayo Clinic has been busy building one of the largest repositories of clinical data in the world. With more than 11 million patients with electronic records, Mayo Clinic currently has more than 250 algorithms under development.
One of the AI-driven tools developed within Mayo Clinic Ophthalmology is the Ophthalmology Parametric Universal Search, also known as OPUS. "OPUS is a powerful AI-bioinformatic system that allows us to search for specific patient cohorts in our medical records and build databases for AI training. Further, it strengthens our ability to do retrospective research and identify patients who might qualify for investigative prospective clinical trials," says Raymond Iezzi Jr., M.D., an ophthalmologist and researcher at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
"It also allows us to employ AI algorithms, analyze datasets and provide annotations," continues Dr. Iezzi. "By curating annotated datasets, we can better find patterns of disease and assemble cohorts of patients for research."
OPUS draws from 25 different databases, all of which are supported by Mayo Clinic's Center for Digital Health. "Mayo's Center for Digital Health has been critical in supporting and maintaining the OPUS infrastructure and organizing the data," says Dr. Iezzi.
The center is focused on transforming how Mayo Clinic delivers patient-centered care in the digital era. "The Center for Digital Health has the vision of bringing Mayo Clinic to a global community so that we can deliver Mayo Clinic care anywhere in a manner that is streamlined," says Sophie J. Bakri, M.D., chair of Ophthalmology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Current projects at the Center for Digital Health include improved consumer experience for patients, expanding virtual care, and transforming healthcare delivery through data and analytics.
For Ophthalmology, using Mayo Clinic's resources has been essential to continued development and utilization of OPUS. "OPUS was designed to let us automatically annotate large image sets," says Dr. Iezzi. "For example, our group in Ophthalmology recently annotated 16 million retinal photos. OPUS is one of the most powerful, advanced AI informatic systems in ophthalmology today."
The options for ways to use this technology are seemingly endless. "We're also collaborating with other departments within Mayo Clinic to help determine how oculomics (the analysis of images of the eye) can help us better identify systemic diseases," says Dr. Iezzi.
And the innovative options certainly don't end within Mayo Clinic's walls. "We are at the cusp of a major transition in computer and health information technology," says Dr. Iezzi. "And it presents the opportunity to build a global network of collaborative organizations using research data and patient records."
"Technology and data-driven innovation are making it possible for us to solve some of the most complex medical problems in novel ways," says Dr. Iezzi. "It's expanding our capabilities and transforming the way we cultivate knowledge — with the goal of ultimately enhancing outcomes for our patients."
For more information
Refer a patient to Mayo Clinic.