cloud technology to address this
rising global concern. MINE, now
part of Microsoft AI Network for
Healthcare, is a global network of
eyecare providers and academic
institutions.
“The utility of artificial intelligence a data set of 335,799 instances from
176,037 patients aged between 0 and
25 years to predict the progression of
refractive errors for a period of two
years. The specialty of this model is
that it predicts the refractive error for a
two-year period considering a person’s
is that it can make these associations
and integrate data within seconds
or minutes, whereas it would take
humans years to aggregate all that
data and find patterns within it.
While research papers have an N of
30 patients, AI-powered technology
can help report on an N of a billion
patients,” says Dr. Ranya Habash,
Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology,
Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and a
MINE partner.
Microsoft in partnership with
LVPEI, has developed a machine
learning approach for prediction
and progression of refractive error
in children and young adults. The
objective is to combine anonymous
medical records and therapy data from
the above healthcare providers and
train cutting-edge machine learning
models to predict the progression
of refractive errors over a two-year
period. With AI and cloud computing,
monitoring and predictive analysis
can be delivered on a much larger
scale.
The Microsoft model is currently
integrated and being validated in
EMR systems at 174 centers of LVPEI
in India. The model was trained on medical history, eye condition and
gender. Accuracy measures showed
that the model proved statistically
accurate and provided optimal
results when used to predict cases
of myopia that could become more
severe and cause physical changes to
the eye’s sphere and cylinder. High
myopia can cause blindness for which
there exists no effective restorative
treatment currently. In this context,
the machine learning model that
predicts the refractive error will be
critical in identifying patients at risk
of developing high myopia, when
integrated into clinical practice.
“Technological tools allowing
predictive analytics and application
of artificial intelligence to arrive
at these insights for doctors will
be of immense help in developing
strategies to control the problem. L
V Prasad Eye Institute’s partnership
with Microsoft will help pave the
path for this progress,” Dr. G.N. Rao
believes.
When expanded, this program
should help eyecare providers, to
closely monitor cases of myopia, find
the patients who are at high risk of
eventual blindness and implement
anti-myopia strategies and remedies
to prevent loss of vision. This should
help bring down the rate of blindness
across the world.
The MINE work was presented by
Raghu Gullapalli, Executive Director
of Emerging T