Constant Therapy Health, whose digital personalized speech, language and cognitive therapy solutions have improved health outcomes for patients recovering from neurological disorders, is the winner of the 2022 Hearst Health Prize.
The purpose of the Hearst Health Prize is to proliferate best practices in data science in healthcare more rapidly, and to showcase successful work. The competition evaluates data science projects or programs that have been implemented and have demonstrated improved health outcomes. It is not a grant program. The winner of the Hearst Health Prize receives $100,000. In addition, up to two finalists will each receive $25,000. As the official partner of the Hearst Health Prize, the UCLA Center for SMART Health identifies data science programs making a measurable difference in human health.
In addition to the $100,000 award for the winner, $25,000 awards were given to each of the two finalists:
- Geisinger was awarded for its data science solution that identifies at-risk individuals across the health system's largely rural population and provides them with appropriate clinical services.
- Prenosis was awarded for its Immunix Platform and Sepsis ImmunoScore, an artificial intelligence- and machine learning-based Software-as-a-Medical-Device that identifies hospital patients at risk for having or developing sepsis.
Lexington, Mass.-based Constant Therapy Health's machine learning platform continuously identifies optimal therapy exercises for patients using their past performance metrics, population performance data for similar patient types, their clinician inputs, and self-submitted preferences and profile information. Using the Constant Therapy platform at home, stroke patients have seen significant improvements on standardized cognitive and language skills assessments compared with patients receiving standard of care workbooks. Patients with traumatic brain injury or stroke showed significant improvement on cognitive and language skills when given access to Constant Therapy at home in addition to clinic therapy.
"The Constant Therapy Health program serves as a groundbreaking example of how advanced care algorithms help patients regain function and recover from brain injury," said Gregory Dorn, M.D., M.P.H., president of Hearst Health, in a statement. "We are pleased to recognize their great work as the 2022 winner of the Hearst Health Prize."
Hearst Health Prize applications were evaluated by experts at the UCLA Center for SMART Health and by a panel of judges. Applicants were scored based on their data science program's health impact or outcome; data science approach; operational and financial sustainability; scalability and generalizability; mitigation of bias; and significance of the problem and solution. Constant Therapy Health scored the highest across these criteria.
"Not only does this solution support patients recovering from traumatic brain injuries and other neurological disorders, it helps the healthcare system overall by addressing a need where clinical resources can be scarce," said Arash Naeim, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of UCLA Center for SMART Health, in a statement.
Geisinger was chosen as a finalist for its array of health data science solutions that identify at-risk patients across the health system’s largely rural population to provide them with appropriate clinical services. These include:
• ConnectedCare365, a virtual care delivery platform that uses remote patient monitoring, artificial intelligence and data analysis to connect patients with care management resources and prevent unnecessary hospital and emergency room visits;
• A machine-learning algorithm that identifies patients at high risk of developing colorectal cancer to promote follow-up screening; and
• A model that uses natural language processing — a type of artificial intelligence allowing computers to understand human language — on radiology reports to identify cases of potentially deadly abdominal aortic aneurysm that might otherwise be missed.
“Providing high-quality preventive care in rural, medically underserved populations is challenging,” said David Vawdrey, Ph.D., chief data and informatics officer at Geisinger, in a statement. “Through our Steele Institute for Health Innovation, Geisinger leverages data science to focus resources where they can yield the greatest benefits. We believe the effective application of data science can improve the health of populations, reduce health care costs and help eliminate inequality and injustice in our health care system.”
"We have taken a deliberate patient-centric approach, incorporating usable insights into workflows to make better health easier,” said Aalpen Patel, M.D., M.B.A., medical director of artificial intelligence at Geisinger, in a statement. “These projects represent the efforts of diverse teams across the Steele Institute for Health Innovation and the Geisinger clinical enterprise, thinking differently and working in concert to drive success.”
Prenosis has created a proprietary biobank and dataset from over 16,000 patients recruited at 10 hospital partner sites. Prenosis has collected over 70,000 biobanked samples from these patients in addition to deep clinical data extracted from the hospital electronic medical records. Using its NOSIS dataset—the largest ever generated for infection—Prenosis has built Host Response Maps using machine learning. Using the maps and a proprietary GPS, Prenosis has developed an artificial intelligence platform to help diagnose and treat acute disease earlier.
"At Prenosis, we believe in treating people like individuals," said Bobby Reddy Jr., Prenosis CEO, in a statement. "We created our dataset because we wanted to tailor treatment to everyone's unique biology. We are building the first maps and GPS to truly understand each individual's biology and to use this understanding to suggest the optimal clinical pathways that most increase chances of improved outcomes. Prenosis has the potential to enable a precision medicine revolution in hospitals where each patient will get the personalized treatment that optimizes their chances of having the longest and highest quality of life."
Prenosis developed the Sepsis ImmunoScore as an assisted intelligence tool to help clinicians identify patients at risk for having or developing sepsis. The Sepsis ImmunoScore is one piece of content on Prenosis' Immunix evidence generation platform, which integrates with hospital EMR systems.
The Hearst Health network includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase and MHK. Hearst also holds a minority interest in the precision medicine and oncology analytics company M2GEN.
