FEBRUARY 5, 2025 — UTSA researchers in MATRIX: The UTSA AI Consortium for Human Well-Being are improving how clinicians handle biomedical and social data.
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 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.”
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 to populate 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 research university in Texas.
UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.
Students, faculty and staff are invited to join UTSA's delegation at the annual César E. Chávez March for Justice in downtown San Antonio. Free transportation will be provided from the Main and Downtown Campuses, and all university community participants will receive a complimentary commemorative t-shirt (while supplies last)
1310 Guadalupe Street, San Antonio, TexasJoin UTSA Libraries and Museums to learn more about the publishing discounts available for UTSA researchers.
Virtual Event (Zoom)PubMed is an essential database for anyone conducting biomedical or health-related research. This workshop will teach attendees how to effectively navigate this free resource and locate peer-reviewed articles using advanced search features, MeSH subject headings, and Boolean operators.
Virtual Event (Zoom)Join us for a hands-on workshop about the basics of copyright, both in education and as a researcher. We’ll dispel some common copyright myths, differences between copyright law and other intellectual property law, and teach you how to apply a Fair Use checklist to your scholarly work.
Virtual Event (Zoom)In this workshop, we will explore sentiment analysis, a method for identifying feelings in text, whether the tone is positive, negative, or neutral.
Group Spot B, John Peace LibraryThe Urban Bird Project at UTSA will discuss urban bird populations, conservation efforts, and how you can get involved.
JPL Assembly Room (4.04.22,) Main CampusLearn to use the simple but powerful features of EndNote®, a citation management tool. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn to setup an EndNote library, save references and PDFs, and automatically create and edit a bibliography.
Virtual Event ( Zoom)The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education .
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to promoting access for all. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
