UTSA researchers develop AI tools to advance health equity

FEBRUARY 5, 2025 — UTSA researchers in MATRIX: The UTSA AI Consortium for Human Well-Being are improving how clinicians handle biomedical and social data from diverse communities.

Funded by a one-year, $500,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s AIM AHEAD program, the researchers are developing an AI-powered network to advance health equity, health care and health-related research.

“We are building an AI-powered infrastructure for professionals in the health sciences that include clinicians, biomedical engineers and researchers, people who are looking at community health disparities,” said Amina Qutub, the Burzik Professor in Engineering Design at UTSA. “It includes an umbrella across the United States of people who are using artificial intelligence to understand biomedical data, and UTSA is providing that infrastructure.”

“Our goals are to accelerate treatments for people and to accelerate discovery.”

The innovative project is supported by a team of UTSA faculty and MATRIX thrust (area) leads, including Qutub, Dhireesha Kudithipudi, Ambika Mathur, Kevin Desai, Panagiotis Markopoulos and Erica Sosa along with UT Health San Antonio professor Mark P. Goldberg, M.D.

The first phase of the project established the M-POWER center and equipped clinicians and researchers with AI and machine learning toolkits to identify and combat health disparities.

Now, in the second phase of funding, the team is developing an online database called MATCH (MATRIX AI/ML Concierge for Healthcare). The researchers are currently collecting biomedical data for interpretation and inclusion in a network infrastructure. This database will initially be available across Texas. Ultimately, the researchers hope to expand its access nationwide.

“It’s a chatbot powered by AI and links to biomedical data,” Qutub explained. “We’re harnessing large language models to build an infrastructure where people with biology backgrounds that don’t have AI backgrounds can use AI without coding but in an informed way. This will serve as a really smart assistant helping clinicians and researchers to make decisions. The smart assistant now is no longer a person; it’s AI.”

Although Qutub doesn’t envision AI ever replacing clinicians, she says that AI’s potential in health care is vast, with applications ranging from clinical care to trauma response. She noted that AI has already proven invaluable in the scientific community in handling complex neurological data, as well as analyzing molecular information from saliva and blood samples. These tasks, which would be time-consuming for a human to process manually, are made efficient by AI integrations.

“We've been fortunate that the people who are working with us on the clinical side really are engaged, and they are quick to pick up these technologies. They want to find things that help resolve medical problems in a way that harnesses the best technologies,” Qutub said. “And that’s what we’re developing: the ability to harness technology so clinical and biomedical researchers can use data in a way that informs their experiments, informs biology and really empowers discovery.”

In addition to its use on the AIM AHEAD-funded project, the MATCH platform will impact the iRemedyACT project. iRemedyACT, which enhances trauma care, will be evolved to use AI and machine learning models that make informed decisions about emergency medical interventions to deliver individualized patient care.

“Our goals are to accelerate treatments for people and to accelerate discovery. Ultimately, these new technologies that come out of it and new findings in the biosciences will improve quality of life and enable us to save lives. That’s what we’re hoping to achieve,” Qutub said.

Focused on four key research thrusts — machine learning and deployment, augmenting human capabilities, neuro-inspired AI, and trustworthy AI — and strategically partnering with industry leaders and federal research labs, MATRIX AI is tackling significant AI challenges while addressing the nation’s growing need for interdisciplinary AI research talent. With multiple dedicated research centers and a plethora of collaborative projects, MATRIX AI is the primary hub for advancing AI research at UTSA and in San Antonio.

The AIM AHEAD-funded project is one of the latest examples of how UTSA and UT Health San Antonio are bringing AI technology to medicine. Last fall, the institutions jointly launched the nation’s first dual degree program in medicine and AI.

The institutions are also embarking on a merger, which when complete will make the newly merged institution the third largest public university in Texas.

— Ari Castañeda