UAMS has now received a $31 million grant to help with research and to help improve healthcare here in the Natural State.
“We are thrilled to receive this award, which keeps us in strong and close association with around 60 other institutions across the United States. This is called a CTSA award, and that abbreviation stands for Clinical and Translational Sciences Award. This is funded by the NIH to really support the infrastructure and projects to do clinical research projects that will really address health outcomes in Arkansas,” said Dr. Laura James, Associate Vice-chancellor for Clinical and Translational Research.
The goal in mind for this grant is to help several programs with deeper research that will then provide Arkansans with better health care.
Grant Will Help Develop Life-Saving AI Research
A portion of the grant will also be used to fund artificial intelligence services. The Chair of the Department for Biomedical Informatics, Dr. Fred Prior, explained that since 2020 when the COVID pandemic first started, researchers have been developing a new AI model in hopes of broadening its use.
“That’s one of the real challenges that we’re trying to focus on. So, my own research focuses on improving lung cancer screening by using a CT scan but having the AI do the first screen and only leaving the few that are questionable for the radiologist, thereby hopefully improving our ability to detect cancer early,” Dr. Prior described.
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