Research talks: Showcasing health equity, access, and resilience collaborations

This series of talks feature Health Delivery research and innovation, collaboration networks, and the next generation of research talent.

00:00 Introduction
Speakers:
Brianna Goodwin, Data Science Researcher, Microsoft Research & Incubations
Brooke Loughrin, Global Health Access Incubation Lead, Microsoft Research & Incubations

05:37 Research Talk: Increasing access to health measurement through mobile-based, noncontact sensing
Speakers:
CJ Park, PhD Student & Research Intern, University of Washington
Daniel McDuff, Microsoft Research Redmond

The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has acutely highlighted the growing need for technology that supports accessible healthcare. One example is in the number appointments held via telehealth and mobile health platforms, which has greatly increased due to stay-at-home orders and greater burdens on healthcare systems. Experts suggest that particular attention be given to cardiovascular and pulmonary protection during the treatment of many conditions, but physicians lack access to objective measurements of a patient’s condition due to the inability to capture vital signs. In this talk, we will present work on methods that leverage ordinary sensors, such as webcams, to measure physiological signals, such as peripheral blood flow, heart rate, respiration, blood oxygenation, and blood pressure. We will discuss our work in developing state-of-the-art neural models to help us learn more robust representations and achieve performance close to that of medical-grade devices.

19:04 Research talk: How to build a better digital health system: Lessons learned from 13 countries
Speakers:
Bill Thies, Sr. Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India
Patricia Moscibrodzki, Research Consultant, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

As countries continue to adapt digital tools to their national health systems, it will be important to learn from the experiences gained in other settings. To this end, we examined digital health systems across 13 low- and middle-income countries using tuberculosis (TB) as a case study. In collaboration with the Global Fund and the Stop TB Partnership, we conducted an interview study with 44 stakeholders from government, funding agencies, and implementation partners. We surveyed the technologies used in the TB cascade of care and the associated challenges and best practices. Our findings indicate that while there is a diversity of experiences across environments, there are also unrealized opportunities to share knowledge and tools in support of better health systems. This talk, we will discuss such opportunities along four emergent dimensions: spanning technical building blocks, digital architecture, interaction with people, and interaction with the ecosystem.

13:44 Research talk: Supporting caregivers in chronic disease care in India
Speakers:
Karthik Bhat, PhD Student, Georgia Tech
Amanda (Mandi) Hall, Senior User Researcher, Microsoft Health Futures

Treatment for chronic diseases involves not only clinical care but also several behavior and lifestyle changes to effectively control and live with the conditions. Though such changes are prescribed as at-home self-care for the patient, family caregivers are directly affected and are heavily involved stakeholders in the patient’s at-home care, especially in strongly family-oriented cultural contexts like India. In this talk, we present an internship project carried out in the summer of 2021, where we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with caregivers of patients with a variety of chronic diseases in India. We sought to understand the roles they play in their loved one’s care and uncover opportunities for interventions that could address their unmet needs in performing their caregiving responsibilities.

45:29 Research talk: Using interpretable machine learning to understand health and healthcare inequities
Speakers:
Rich Caruana, Sr. Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Redmond
Vanessa Polk, Senior Partner, Microsoft Research & Incubations

Substantial disparities in healthcare outcomes are linked to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. To correct these disparities, we first need to understand what causes them. As machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods become more common in healthcare, it is crucial to understand why models become biased and how to mitigate this bias. Fortunately, intelligible ML methods now make it easier to understand what models have learned and provide tools to mitigate some of this bias. In this presentation, we show how interpretable ML methods can be used to better answer the questions of why we see certain inequities in healthcare data.

Learn more about the 2021 Microsoft Research Summit: https://Aka.ms/researchsummit (opens in new tab)

Event:

Microsoft Research Summit 2021

Track:

Health & Life Sciences: Delivery

Date:

October 20, 2021

Speakers:

Brianna Goodwin, Brooke Loughrin, CJ Park, Daniel McDuff, Bill Thies, Patricia Moscibrodzki, Karthik Bhat, Amanda (Mandi) Hall, Rich Caruana, Vanessa Polk

Affiliation:

Microsoft Research, University of Washington, Microsoft Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Georgia Tech, Microsoft, Microsoft Research