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Notre Dame researchers partner with Mexico hospital to develop childhood cancer care monitoring tool

2025-01-27T13:09:40-05:00

For a child battling cancer, an unexpectedly high temperature can initiate a race against time to reach providers who can treat and monitor symptoms. And for families in low- and middle-income communities in Mexico, pediatric cancer care is even more of a challenge. Fragmented healthcare systems, the absence of trackable health data, and a lack of access to healthcare facilities with readily available resources are fueling a race not easily won.

Now, a study to evaluate the preliminary design and usability of a cooperative cancer monitoring tool has published successful findings that may address this gap in care.

Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez

An interdisciplinary team of 30 researchers and health professionals from the University of Notre Dame, the Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez (HIMFG) and the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico (INSP) are working together to develop a comprehensive health app, SaludConectaMX, that can be accessible to clinicians in a hospital setting and caretakers at home.

“SaludConectaMX represents the dedicated effort of an interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners across three institutions and two countries, all united by the goal of driving innovation in service of society — reflecting the University’s commitment to building bridges as a force for good,” said Nitesh Chawla, founding director of the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and lead author of the project’s publication. “While we are still early in our journey, the success of the pilot study inspires us with hope for the transformative impact SaludConectaMX will have in supporting families battling pediatric cancer.”

Chawla and Angélica García Martínez, an international scholar and postdoctoral research associate for the Lucy Family Institute, worked together to organize the cohort of international researchers.

“Our work with the Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez includes supporting pediatric cancer patients with febrile neutropenia, a condition that occurs when a pathogen is present in the bloodstream, causing high temperatures in patients with lower-than-normal levels of white blood cells. Without immediate care and extended hospital stays, these patients have poor health outcomes,” said Garcia Martinez.

More than half of children in Mexico experience extreme poverty — most without health coverage and social welfare benefits that provide quality health and nutrition for families struggling with life-changing illnesses. In 2022 alone, 95% of emergency room consultations at HIMFG were for children without health insurance.

While mortality is linked to various factors, including age, type of tumor, stage at diagnosis and genetic predisposition, the financial burden and fragmentation of health services available to families in low- and middle-income communities are generating delays in diagnosis and treatment of infection-related complications — reducing the chances of positive health outcomes. Based on available data, it is estimated that survival rates for childhood cancer in these communities in Mexico is half the rates observed in high-income countries.

Additionally, many of the families attended by HIMFG have only completed an elementary school education. For this reason, they struggle with health and technical literacy. At the same time, the absence of a tool for tracking health information including childhood cancer cases is hindering a comprehensive understanding of factors that may contribute to complications, creating financial burdens that push families deeper into poverty and strain public health resources. The Lucy Institute’s collaboration with HIMFG aims to alleviate some of these challenges.

“The SaludConectaMX system is a cooperative way for physicians and caretakers to monitor a patient’s evolving health trajectory during cancer treatment when they are most vulnerable to developing life-threatening complications,” Gracia Martinez said.

The SaludConectaMX system features a holistic approach to monitoring the signs and symptoms of adverse health effects that can occur during the cycle of cancer treatment. The software development was led by Michael Kennel, lead software solutions architect for the Lucy Family Institute, and Notre Dame alumnus Patrick Soga, supported by a technical team in Mexico. It features two applications — a hospital web component and a family mobile application — to track clinical indicators, including standard clinical information, treatment plans and social determinants of healthcare access. Information is securely stored and accessed through individual account registrations.

Once enrolled, caretakers can submit information, including their mental health status and complementary social determinants of health, which may play a key role in a patient’s risk factors for developing complications during their cycle of treatments.

Horacio Márquez-González, a clinical researcher for the HIMFG, is working with Notre Dame researchers to identify the key features needed in the system’s design. “A significant challenge is that the needs of caregivers are distinct from those of health personnel. When complications arise, caregivers must provide continuous care to the urgent needs of the child, which may or may not include submitting health information including oxygen saturation level, blood pressure and temperature into the system.”

In the clinical setting, health professionals rely on the information that caretakers submit, which can be subjective depending on the level of training and development of skills a caretaker has received.

“When we started developing the system, we had to consider the impact that it would have on hospital workers and families who might rely on it to monitor their child’s care. This meant identifying the challenges with mobile application usage and access to reliable networks, along with other barriers that might limit communications between users and the interface,” said Karla Badillo-Urquiola, the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, a fellow of the Lucy Family Institute, and a co-author of the publication.

As an expert in human-computer interaction, Badillo-Urquiola connected with families living in rural areas who needed more experience with the mobile application. “One of the things that we identified as a critical component for the success of this project was to implement a training feature to guide caretakers through all of the application’s features,” she explained.

The project’s next phase will be to analyze the collected user data and feedback from the pilot study. “There are almost 400 patients enrolled in the system right now,” said Jennifer Schnur, a graduate research assistant in the Data Inference Analytics and Learning Lab. Schnur, who is a co-author of the publication of the pilot’s results, added, “There is already a significant amount of engagement within the system, so our priority moving forward is to optimize existing features and to increase usability by leveraging artificial intelligence to integrate additional resources into the family mobile application.”

The results of the pilot study were presented in November at the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in Costa Rica.

Contact: Brandi Wampler, associate director of media relations, 574-631-2632, brandiwampler@nd.edu

To prevent opioid misuse in teens and young adults, researchers turn to AI and social media data

2024-09-27T14:14:00-04:00

Teenagers spend more than five hours on social media each day. Their online interactions might reveal clues that save them from the opioid epidemic.

A student looks at smartphone while on a bike outside O’Shaughnessy Hall at Notre Dame. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Graduating classes are dwindling as the opioid epidemic claims the lives of high school and college-aged adolescents from communities throughout the United States.

America’s increased activity on social media platforms has heightened the risks of opioid overdose and drug misuse, while research to promote personalized health, safety and intervention recommendations to the nearly 30 percent of at-risk teenagers and young adults (TYAs) has been lacking.

Now, researchers at the University of Notre Dame are developing a new artificial intelligence-driven paradigm using social media data to provide insights into personalized interventions for reducing opioid misuse and death among teens and young adults.

Recently, the U.S. National Science Foundation awarded a $1.5 million grant for a four-year project to use large-scale social media data generated from TYAs, roughly ages 15 to 25, to develop a messaging platform tailored to individual risks and community contexts aiming to promote community resilience against opioid misuse and addiction.

“Opioid overdose deaths have continued to increase across the country; specifically, TYAs are disproportionately affected by and particularly vulnerable to misuse and addiction. Parents of at-risk teens who have been impacted by the opioid epidemic frequently contact me to share their stories,” said Yanfang (Fanny) Ye, the Galassi Family Collegiate Professor in Computer Science and Engineering and associate director of applied analytics for the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society.

Yanfang (Fanny) Ye

Ye will lead the project, titled “A New AI-Driven Paradigm to Promote Community Resilience for Teenagers and Young Adults in Preventing Opioid Misuse and Addiction.” Input from 14 community partners, including the parents of at-risk youth, medical clinicians, emergency response services personnel, representatives from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and public school leadership will help direct the project’s design and development and link to community-based prevention and treatment services.

An expert in AI and machine learning, Ye has conducted multiple projects to combat the opioid epidemic through AI innovation. In 2023, her work was broadcast on NBC as part of the University’s award-winning “What Would You Fight For?” series, which showcases the work, scholarly achievements and global impact of Notre Dame faculty, students and alumni.

“By analyzing data collected from platforms where TYAs are actively engaged, we can develop a valuable network of relationships that identify the risks of opioid misuse, and offer customized prevention and intervention options directed at this distinct yet vulnerable age group,” Ye said.

Developing an application to detect at-risk TYAs is pivotal to the project’s success.

Ye is working with researchers from the Applied Analytics & Emerging Technology Lab within the Lucy Family Institute to apply a graph-based deep learning approach to identify TYAs who are most likely to be at risk of opioid misuse and addiction. Graph neural networks are artificial intelligence applications that are designed to build relationships between visualizations, models or graphed data. Recently, graph neural networks have been used for weather forecasting models and for the discovery of novel antibiotics and polymers.

Ye and the Applied Analytics & Emerging Technology Lab team will use the graph neural networks and large language models to identify key risk factors from at-risk groups to develop a safety-enhanced multimodal learning framework for tailored messaging. The applications will provide personalized, interactive and educational messages to TYAs based on their community characteristics and individual circumstances in preventing opioid misuse and addiction.

“The University of Notre Dame is guided by a moral imperative to address the challenges of society’s most vulnerable populations, including those facing the dangers of the opioid epidemic,” said Nitesh Chawla, founding director of the Lucy Family Institute and the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Chawla is a co-principal investigator on the project. He adds, “Through data-driven AI innovation, the Lucy Family Institute is committed to providing impactful research that can promote resilience and well-being for future generations.”

Other co-principal investigators on the project include Erin Winstanley, professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and Chuxu Zhang, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Connecticut.

The outcomes of the project will be made publicly available for wide distribution.

To learn more about Ye’s current research, visit http://yes-lab.org/.

Contact: Brandi Wampler, associate director of media relations, 574-631-2632, brandiwampler@nd.edu

Center for Civic Innovation joins Lucy Family Institute to foster data-driven advancements in South Bend communities

2024-04-04T09:28:00-04:00

The Notre Dame Center for Civic Innovation in South Bend. (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

The mansions of the Studebaker and Oliver families that line West Washington Street in South Bend stand as a testament to the city’s history as a powerhouse of industrial innovation. Just a few blocks to the west, the University of Notre Dame Center for Civic Innovation (CCI) highlights the power of community partners, working together to address the needs of the community. Formed in 2018, CCI has worked to strengthen the University’s efforts to build connections, driving innovation by developing new programs and technologies with local partners.

Now, CCI is strengthening its connection to applied research by merging with Notre Dame’s Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society. The merger will allow CCI to expand existing research and education opportunities and enhance its data-driven approach to increasing the region’s civic engagement.

“From the very beginning, starting with the Bowman Creek Educational Ecosystem, which helped restore a local polluted waterway, we have always had a strong thread of data analysis and data visualization in the work that we do,” said Jay Brockman, professor of the practice of computer science and engineering in the College of Engineering. According to Brockman, who has served as the director of CCI, "joining the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society is an opportunity to bring greater impact into our communities and a broader reach throughout campus.”

CCI will also be renamed as the Lucy Civic Innovation Lab (LCIL). The downtown office will serve as a vibrant hub for campus and community collaborations.

Student interns demonstrate sensor technology outside the Notre Dame Center for Civic Innovation in South Bend. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

“The University’s new strategic framework is guiding us toward deeper engagement with the local community and to think institutionally,” says Nitesh Chawla, founding director of the Lucy Institute and the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. “Welcoming the Center for Civic Innovation into the Lucy Family Institute as the Lucy Civic Innovation Lab is helping to advance the University towards this mission, igniting our collaborative capacity to address challenges directly in our local community.”

The Lucy Civic Innovation Lab will continue to offer internship and educational opportunities to area students to tackle complex community-based issues by developing civic engagement projects in the local community. These programs will supplement educational opportunities already available through the Lucy Family Institute that explore data science through the lens of social responsibility.

Future projects are already underway within the Lucy Institute framework. “This is an exciting time for us,” Chawla said. “We are embarking on an adventurous new convergence that can only help to reinforce our mission to produce innovations as a force for good.”

To learn more about ongoing research and educational opportunities within the Lucy Institute, please visit the website.

Contact: Christine Grashorn, communications specialist, Notre Dame Research, 574-631-4856