2 min read October 2023 — In an interview with Invest: Steve Miff, president and CEO of the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), talked about the organization’s impactful role in the healthcare space in North Texas. PCCI focuses on the transformative potential of data in healthcare, particularly at the intersection of AI and data science, with a strong emphasis on aiding vulnerable community members, he said.
What impact does PCCI have on healthcare in North Texas?
PCCI is a nonprofit, data science and innovation hub. Last year, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary of bringing our mission to North Texas and beyond. We believe in the transformational and potential power of data in healthcare, and we wake up every day to focus on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technology and their role in advancing the health and well-being of the most vulnerable members of our community. As part of our mission, we are working to create practical applications for advancing AI to gather a holistic, 360-degree view of an individual through data and algorithms that provide better insights to help those who serve these individuals in the community.
What have been some milestones for PCCI in the past year?
This past year has been pivotal for us. When the pandemic started, we had a strong digital technology infrastructure and established partnerships, allowing us to accomplish amazing work with the community in support of pandemic efforts. From day one of the pandemic, we partnered with Dallas County Health and Human Services to assist with advanced analytics. From there, we received daily feeds of individual-level data on testing and later, on vaccinations. We combined those data with a newly developed neighborhood block-level vulnerability index and were able to support all the critical decisions made across the environment to ensure equitable access to services for every individual.
As the pandemic retreated, we took those lessons and applied them to other clinical conditions, such as pediatric asthma. We deployed a predictive model algorithm that can predict a child’s risk for asthma 90 days before they would likely need advanced care, such as an emergency room visit or hospitalization. This is embedded into the physician workflows and proactively alerts them when someone is at a high risk. Families are also enrolled in educational text-message reminders and information about the severity of their child’s asthma, medications and personal preventive actions they can take.
We also enhanced and expanded the community vulnerability index we developed during the pandemic to help us understand what parts of the community have the most complex health-related socioeconomic needs and the factors that contribute to those health and personal challenges. We use that information now to map each community, using 26 indexed socioeconomic factors (e.g., mobility, food insecurity, stable housing) across every block in Texas to help plan and support hyper-localized population health programs and specific patient interventions to remove barriers to access and improve health and well-being.
We also expanded the technology for other clinical applications. For example, the Parkland emergency department is the busiest emergency room in the country, and we have been able to implement a real-time predictive mortality algorithm to understand the risk of dying and help clinicians make critical decisions on a patient’s treatment.
How have you seen technology change in the healthcare sector?
Among the most talked about technologies are GAI and ChatGPT. These are transformational and will play a significant role in how we leverage data. While AI is not new, these new developments are revolutionary and have the potential to democratize, accelerate and scale AI applications. Where I see a challenge is with respect to the infrastructure required to support these capabilities and access to data while still protecting personal information. The second most discussed item is the cost of operationalizing AI with the third being accuracy concerns.
What key partnerships are you utilizing?
I am a strong believer that you can only go as far as your team and partners. I believe culture trumps strategy any day and while strategy is critical, without the right team to execute it, the best strategy is just a daydream. Locally, our partners include the entire Parkland community, Dallas County Health and Human Services, and the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, to name a few. Another meaningful local partner is Southern Methodist University (SMU). We partnered with SMU five years ago with the launch of our summer internship program that advances women in data science. It is a 10-week intensive program that gives emerging women scientists hands-on experience working with clinicians and data scientists on real programs utilizing real clinical data to benefit members of the community.
Nationally, we joined the Health AI Partnership with Duke, Berkley, Mayo and a few other leading organizations. It has been incredible to have these active partners and thought leaders in the AI innovation space and accelerate learning through our collective efforts.
How has population growth impacted the work you do?
In North Texas, the infusion of talent has been tremendous as the migration of new corporations (and families) has expanded the talent pool significantly. It is a competitive space and the influx has enhanced our ability to bring in people to contribute to our mission. The other part is it has become more important to understand the needs of underserved populations as the wealth gap increases. For example, we collaborated with the Parkland Community Health Plan on a program to address preterm births. Through data, we are able to identify women who are missing appointments because they are single working mothers living in areas without good transportation or access to daycare. Unless we address their life challenges to improve access and introduce, as appropriate, telehealth for certain appointments or provide some form of transportation, we will not be able to improve the health of these vulnerable women and their children.
Where do you see PCCI going in the next three years?
We will continue pushing the envelope of innovation when it comes to the application of AI and data science to vulnerable populations. We have a good grasp on understanding clinical history and need and we have developed a great way to understand an individual’s everyday life challenges. We are making progress as well on integrating insights into mental and behavioral health status and starting to explore algorithms to understand an individual’s capacity for self care and activation. These together get us to “know thy patient” and will give us a comprehensive view into an individual and their family to empower them and bring services to them that are accessible and preventative.
We are also going to increase our scale and expand our partnership ecosystem and accelerate how innovations are integrated into patient care. Those will be key priorities over the next few years.
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