Zafar receives RFA Innovator Award to explore augmented reality and epilepsy surgery

The Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI) has awarded a $50,000 2020 RFA Innovation Award to Muhammad Zafar, MBBS, assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Neurology, Matthew Vestal, MD, MBA, assistant professor of neurosurgery, and Abhi Kapuria, MD, chief resident in the Adult Neurology Residency Program for their project entitled, "Transforming epilepsy surgery with augmented reality."

Augmented reality is technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on top of a person's view of the real world, providing the user with a mix of the real world and imposed images. The DIHI award will allow the team to investigate how superimposed images may allow neurosurgeons to provide more effective, more accurate surgery to treat epilepsy.

For the past seven years, DIHI has supported high-potential innovation projects with the potential to improve the value of care delivery, enhance provider and staff experience and well-being, enhance patient engagement and experience, and accelerate population health solutions and strategies. This is the seventh year that DIHI has funded projects through a request for applications (RFA) across Duke Health.

This year Duke Health leaders selected 11 projects from more than 65 high-quality applications. In addition to providing funding to advance the selected projects, DIHI will work with various Duke Health and Duke University partners to provide access to data, analytics, statistical analysis, machine learning and AI resources, while driving project and implementation management. 

“In the rapidly changing health care environment we need to leverage the talent and creative thinking at Duke to deliver care and improve health in new and innovative ways now more than ever,” said William Fulkerson, MD, executive vice president of the Duke University Health System and executive director of DIHI. “The exceptional quality of applications this year speaks to the collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to health care improvement championed by our providers, staff and trainees at Duke Health." 

Other DIHI Innovation Projects and Principal Investigators this year include:

Machine Learning for Early Identification and Management of Pulmonary Embolism
Schuyler Jones, MD; Hope Weissler, MD; Alexander Sullivan, MD; Talal Dahhan, MD; Kishan Parikh, MD; Terry Fortin, MD; Alexander Limkakeng, MD; Samuel Francis, MD; Jason Katz, MD; Timothy Amrhein, MD; William Ratliff, MBA; William Knechtle, MHA, MBS; Michael Gao; Armando Bedoya, MD, MMCI; and Manesh Patel, MD

Dermatology Clinical Decision Support in Primary Care
Meenal Kheterpal, MD; Ricardo Henao, PhD; Kevin Shah, MD; Meng Xia; Samantha Wong; Christine Park; and Arsh Patel

A Population Health Strategy for NAFLD using an E-Consult Platform and NLP
Yuval Patel, MD; Andrew Muir, MD; Devdutta Sangvai, MD, MBA; Blake Cameron, MD; Momen Wahidi, MD, MBA; Chad Mather, MD, MBA; and Mustafa Bashir, MD

Using Xealth to Manage Population Health and Engage Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease
Blake Cameron, MD, MBI; Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH; Matt Roman, MHA, MMCI; Anisha Chandiramani, MD; David Claxton, MMCi; Patti Ephraim, MPH; Kevin Shah, MD, MBA; Tara Kinard, RN, MS, MBA; and Dev Sangvai, MD, MBA

A Unified Framework for Predicting Bacteremia and Interpreting Blood Culture Results
Christopher R. Polage, MD, MAS; Deverick Anderson, MD; Cara O’Brien, MD; Raquel R. Bartz, MD, MMCi; Brian Griffith, MD; Jill Engle, DNP; Daniel Gilstrap, MD; Justin Silverman, PhD; Mark Sendak, MD, MPP; Sarah Lewis, MD, MPH; Becky Smith, MD; Jennifer Saullo, MD, PharmD; and Rebekah Moehring, MD, MPH

A Predictive Model for Assisted Triage of Traumatic Brain Injury
Timothy Dunn, PhD; Mike Haglund, MD, PhD; Anthony Fuller, MD; Brian Burrows, MD; Steven Cook, MD; and David Carlson, PhD

A Virtual Operating Room Hub to Facilitate Peri-Operative Communication
Robert Qi, MD; Ro Tejwani, MD, MS; and Wendy Webster, MBA

Development of a Maternal Early Warning System Using Machine Learning
Courtney Mitchell, MD, PhD; Brenna Hughes, MD; Ashraf Habib, MBBCh, MSc; Terrence Allen, MBBS; Mark Sendak, MD, MPP; Cara O’Brien, MD; William Ratliff, MBA; and William Knechtle, MBA, MPH

Development and Implementation of a Hospital at Home Program in Wake County
Vidhya Aroumougame, MD, MBA; David Zaas, MD, MBA; Adia Ross, MD, MHA; and Mike Spiritos, MD

Using a Mortality Risk Predictor Model for Advance Care Planning via a Transitions of Care Toolkit
Amanda Bisset, MD; J. Trig Brown, MD, MPH; and Aparna Kamath, MD, MS

DIHI promotes innovation in health and health care through high-impact innovation pilots, leadership development, and cultivation of a community of entrepreneurship. 

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