Chi receives NIH grant to use AI, big data science for optimal statin treatment plan

Assistant Professor Chih-Lin Chi, PhD, MBA, was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to use big data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine an individualized statin treatment plan for people seeking to lower their cholesterol.

The research utilizes data from the OptumLabs Data Warehouse, which includes de-identified insurance claims and electronic health records data from more than 200 million patients across the United States. The School of Nursing was one of the first members of the OptumLabs research collaborative, an academic/corporate partnership.

Chi’s study will produce a precision-medicine tool to give care providers the ability to make proactive clinical decisions regarding statin treatment planning, like selecting the specific statin drug and dosage optimized for a particular patient to maximize low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol reduction and minimize statin discontinuation. While an estimated 47 percent of Americans 65 years old and older take statins to reduce their LDL cholesterol, more than half of patients prescribed statins do not obtain these critical benefits because they discontinue use within one year of treatment initiation.

Chi worked with the University of Minnesota Office of Technology Commercialization to file a provisional patent on the intellectual property created in his preliminary study, which is the first patent application filed by an OptumLabs research partner.

This interprofessional health informatics project involves nine key areas, including nursing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, preventive clinic, pharmacy, cloud and high-performance computing, biostatistics, operations research, clinical studies and clinical trial simulations.