Disclaimer: This project idea is the intellectual property of the Disease Predictive Analysis Team.
Team: Disease Predictive Analysis Team (WINNER, 2017)
Members: Phil Gringer, Ben Hollander, Akash Jairam, and Christopher Menedes
Link to the Business Case Analysis.
Overview of the Project – This project developed a prototype that will predict missing disease classification. IBM Watson Disease Classification Software (Watson DCS) will allow the disease classification system to be interoperable, flexible, and capable of classifying any incoming disease report. This enables epidemiologists and research scientists to accomplish more in less time and to handle an increased workload. These factors increase the productivity and efficiency of the DOHMH. Furthermore, it would accrue savings of at least $300,000 annually.
Problem – Failure to automatically classify health reports makes it harder for epidemiologists and research scientists to track and prevent disease outbreaks. Informatics specialists have to manually check these unclassified documents.
Approach to address the problem – With Watson DCS, the system would continuously make neural connections, link diseases to each other and discover the origin of such outbreaks. The response rate, containment and the source of origin of diseases/outbreaks will be determined significantly faster. As a result, employees can extract data faster than they would otherwise be able to.
Benefits and Impacts – Watson DCS’s machine learning capabilities will allow all incoming electronic health reports to be classified in real-time. These reports will train Watson DCS to classify reports faster and enable more accurate classification as time goes on.
Various departments, including Informatics and Epidemiology, will see an immediate growth in productivity. Informatics specialists can focus their time and resources on doing something tangible with incoming reports since information retrieval will now be fully automated. The automation of Watson DCS will promote seamless communication between informatics teams and research teams. This would increase the level of teamwork as well as the quality of service. Excess time will no longer have to be spent on monotonous work and the true value of these departments can be utilized to better keep New Yorkers safe.